


Age of Ouran

by Sambucivox



Category: Ouran High School Host Club - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Crime, Multi, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-01
Updated: 2015-07-06
Packaged: 2018-03-04 18:50:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 36,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3082643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sambucivox/pseuds/Sambucivox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU - Japan has complex laws that change hourly at the whim of the powerful. Haruhi Fujioka, a bright minor poised to become a lawyer, sees her dreams crash into the floor when her father disappears after being accused of a mysterious crime and she is tossed into Ouran Orphanage, a dangerous school attended by the children of the condemned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I love science-fiction and speculative essays, as well as boarding school stories. The idea of flipping Ouran's premise -that Haruhi is the one that comes from a relatively privileged background, and the Ouran 6 are the ones that are much street-smarter than she is- has been tickling at me for years, but until now I never found the right plot to work it in. I hope that you enjoy the ride enough to forgive any linguistic mistakes that you might find, because although I try to be very careful, English is still not my first language.
> 
> *Bows deeply and humbly*
> 
> *Once upon a future...*

 

**Chapter 1**

The world was made of ever-changing rules, and all of them had to be followed. Haruhi Fujioka knew that as long as she toed the line, jumped on cue, kept her head down and stayed alert she would be fine. Her father was careful too, but he was the breadwinner for most of the year, and unfortunately his range of abilities fell in the shady side of the many lines of the law. Depending on what the morning tweets relayed to the Fujiokas’ handcells, Haruhi’s daddy would stay home and she would sneak food home from her school rations, risking a black mark on her pristine file, or he would done his make-up and silky skirt and head into the red district.

Haruhi knew that she hadn’t been caught with food in her pockets because of her teacher’s leniency, and for that she was immensely grateful, and tried to help them back in her own way tutoring other students and trying her best to raise the average note of her high school, which would in turn attract more money for teaching resources and, hopefully, less attention from the all-seeking eyes of the Inlaws.

She had barely fallen asleep when they fetched her, a-knocking down her door in the middle of the night and stampeding into their studio flat. A beam of pure white light blinded Haruhi as soon as she opened her eyes, just as it was designed to do, leaving her disconcerted and flailing just as she was supposed to do. She knew that she would not see anything for hours, and that her eyes would sting for weeks to come.

“This is an arrest notice for Ryoji “Ranka” Fujioka,” announced the Inlaw bot with its soothing stereophonic voice. It was designed to bounce against the walls, covering any other sound, impossible to fix in one spot. Haruhi wrapped herself tightly with the sheet, and covered her head with the pillow. She was unable to do anything except try to protect her brain in case the Inlaws “mistook” her for Ranka. “Mr. Fujioka, you have violated decree 84-2001 section P. You will not be harmed. Release all weapons and put your hands up,”

Silence followed, with only Haruhi’s heartbeat in her chest and her breath caught in her throat.

Then her pillow was pulled up and her long hair caught in an iron grip that forced her to stand up.

“Identification Number and name, citizen!” the voice was female, but the strength wasn’t.

“207 23 314, Fujioka, Haruhi!”

“Are you related to Ryoji Fujioka?” asked the Inlaw.

“Of course she is related, piece of crap. The file said that he lived with his daughter,”

“Officer Kosaka, by insulting an Inlaw you are breaking ruling number 65,”

“Deal with it. So, tell me, pretty thing, where is your daddy?”

Haruhi felt the grip relax and she stayed up. She felt the cold wind blowing from the open door into the apartment. “I don’t know. I have not seen him since last night,”

“Interesting,” said officer Kosaka. “If I believed you, I would have to ask you where did he go,”

“I don’t know. To work,”

“And where does he work?”

Haruhi bit her tongue. If they were looking for her father because he had committed an infraction, they already knew his approximate location of the past year. They knew perfectly well where he worked. If she admitted to it, she would be acknowledging that she was conscious of his unorthodox activities and that she had not reported him. If she lied, it would be even worse.

“Out in the Red district,” she said, deciding that half-truth was the best policy in this case. She tried to look earnest, but she didn’t know where to look, so she settled on scared, which wasn’t too far from the truth. “We follow the news every day, we try to avoid breaking the law. I’m sure that whatever he did was an accident, that he didn’t mean it,”

“Do or not do,” said officer Kosaka, releasing her hair. Haruhi heard her tap on a keyboard, probably her handcell’s, as she rubbed her aching scalp. “There is no try,”

A pause. Haruhi tried to squat and reach for her slipper boots, but the Inlaw pushed her back in position. She squinted, trying to see something in the darkness beyond primordial flashes and colors.

“Haruhi Fujioka. It says here that you are the first in your class. Huh. Oh, you want to be a lawyer,” Officer Kosaka chuckled softly. “That’s precious,” a soft swoop, the handcell closed, “So, has your father contacted you since the last time you saw him?”

“Yes, ma’am. Today at school he sent me a public tweet,”

“Which says?”

“Just a selfie of him with a famous customer. It’s public domain,” Haruhi pointed at the table where her handcell lied, waiting. “I would show you, but… my eyes,”

“I’ll see for myself,” officer Kosaka’s footsteps walked across the room and back. Haruhi felt a flash brighter than the others when she set the handcell to her eye level, which unlocked the screen. “Yes, I see,” she whistled as she scrolled through the messaging apps – Haruhi knew for a fact that her handcell was cleaner than fresh laundry, that there were no incriminatory texts or pictures or contacts. She had always been very careful. And yet, she could not help but being afraid about what officer Kosaka might find, what she might see – if a law had been passed an hour ago that declared pictures of recent criminals illegal, or if the fact that the daughter of a persecuted man had a handcell constituted a crime. In that moment, she would have given her left hand to check the news and make sure that she was not stepping right into a trap.

“Well, miss Fujioka, it looks like you are not guilty of anything,” said officer Kosaka. Haruhi heard her handcell slide into the pocket of the police woman, and regretted its loss, but she guessed that she could get another one easily.

“Thank you,” said Haruhi, feeling her fear lift. She would have to contact the headmaster to explain her absence next morning. She suspected that she would still be half-blind, and that she would not be able to attend class. She should use that time to contact her father.

“Inlaw, help miss Fujioka get dressed,”

“Wait, what?”

“You might be innocent, but you are still a minor and I have to get you sorted,”

“But I live here,”

“Not anymore, you don’t.”

 

* * *

 

 

It took Officer Kosaka less than an hour to get Haruhi sorted through a mixture of shameless flirting and blundering at night shift bureaucrats. Haruhi was put in a corner to stare at blank darkness and cringe about her future. She had never seriously considered that she might be put in the system if her father committed an offense – she had always assumed that by the time he started taking risks, she would be old enough to stay at home and fend for herself. She even had a stack of cash cards hidden behind the wall of their closet that would guarantee her sustenance for a whole month in case something happened to her father.

“Is there anyone that you want to contact?” asked Officer Kosaka, coming back into Haruhi’s perception sphere with the warm scent of coffee.

Haruhi wanted very badly to contact her headmaster, her neighbors, her landlady and most of all her dad, but she could not burden them with her plight. Everybody was terrified of becoming guilty by association, and although she suspected that they might come, Officer Kosaka had made it abundantly clear that they would not be able to help her beyond lending a sympathetic ear.

“No, thank you very much. If I may… could you please tell me what my father is accused of?”

“You want to be a lawyer and you don’t know the decrees?”

“I’m unfamiliar with sections beyond D of the decrees. 84-2001 section P is restricted access. I have never been able to study it properly. I would have told him about it,” Haruhi felt her nostrils dilating, her lower lip trembling, and blinked furiously to hold back her tears. She felt Officer Kosaka sitting down next to her.

“If it’s of any use, knowing about it would not have helped him one bit. I’m very sorry, but other than that, I cannot tell you exactly what your father is accused of. We are all cogs in the system, and I only got called for the arrest,”

“What do you mean? You don’t know why you are looking for my father?” Haruhi turned her blind eyes to her. The effects of the Flash were starting to wear off, she could now perceive blurry grayish forms in the cloud of darkness. “You can’t tell me why you are taking me from home?”

“Sorry,” said officer Kosaka. “I’m only a junior, level 3,”

Haruhi didn’t say anything.

“Look, I’m not going to get grilled for talking about confidential crap to a suspect’s daughter, right? What good would it do to me or to you? Besides, I’m as good as it gets for you right now, because I know exactly where they are sending you, and it’s where I come from. So I’m going to be able to give you some pointers,”

Haruhi didn’t say anything. She kept thinking back to her stack of cash cards, wondering if the landlady would rent out their apartment soon and how much time she had until the new owners found them and took them and spent them. If she could escape the Authorities for even just one hour, she might be able to use that money to finance her search for her father.

“So, you are going to be put in Ouran Orphanage,” continued Kosaka, “It is a very tough place, but it is not by any stretch of the imagination the worse that Tokyo has to offer,”

“Isn’t it called Crime High?” said Haruhi in a very small voice. She saw her career as a lawyer disappear in a puff of smoke.

“Heh, that’s cute. In my days we called it the Crack Lab. Anyway, the infrastructure is sound even if the buildings are quite old –which means that the roof is not going to collapse on your head while you sleep- and they have a solid academic program. Not as good as the one you are currently attending, nor as thorough as you might need for your career – have you considered other options, anyway?- but it will keep you busy for at least six hours every day. You will have four hours of community service, and two hours of clubs or sports or whatever,”

“Or whatever,”

“You can use that time to sleep if you want, although I wouldn’t recommend you to spend time in the dormitories alone during the day – there is power in the mass, and there are gangs at Ouran, and God knows what might happen to you if you look like prey. Speaking of which, whatever you do, do not join a gang,”

“I don’t want to -”

“Good. Because that shit will follow you for the rest of your life. Ouran Orphanage has a uniform, which is great for you because all the clothes not currently on your body belong to the Authorities now, as do all the other items in the place you formerly knew as home,”

Haruhi covered her eyes with her hands, laid her elbows on her knees and tried very hard not to cry.

“As you do, until you are of age,” Officer Kosaka sympathetically pat her between the shoulder blades. “Or if your father is declared innocent, whichever happens first. But being on the run like he is, he cannot be declared anything. It might be better for both of you if he showed up,”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Meh – hold on. You will be a free young woman in a few years, and then you can try and become a lawyer – although you must know that after a stint like this it will be extremely difficult. If your father contacts you, call me. It will show your eagerness to collaborate with the system, which might make your career prospects a little better. Or you might consider other tracks,” Officer Kosaka took out her handcell and scrolled through it. “School at Ouran is going to be a breeze for you, advanced as you are. Social life… well… try not to have too much of that while you are there and you will be fine,”

“But you just told me to never be alone,”

“Yes, well. Get close to groups – not gangs- but keep in mind that the people you meet there can never be your friends. Half of them will be like you, just wanting time to go fast so that they can get back in track. But the other half… you wouldn’t believe the things they have done. Or that their families have done. The things that they can make you do, if you let them get under your skin. Speaking of which –“

Haruhi felt Officer Kosaka’s hand going through her hair, which she had pushed into a ponytail before going to bed, stretching it, and then the unmistakable snip of a pair of scissors. She jumped back from her chair, feeling her nape, suddenly naked and exposed and cold. Her head felt much lighter now.

“What did you do that for? What the hell?!”

Kosaka snickered. “You will thank me later,”

“That was my hair!”

“As I told you moments ago, it is technically the Authorities hair. Don’t worry. I will donate it to some wig-making association for cancer patients. The truth is, you looked way too cute. Your good girl looks could hurt you on your first weeks at Ouran – what do you think you are going to be perceived as? Princess hair, bright marks, big eyes. You would immediately become a target. This will buy you some time until that happens. Use it wisely,” an Inlaw approached them, its faint golden glow illuminating Haruhi’s grey world. He reached out an appendix, holding out an object, and Kosaka took it and immediately turned it over to Haruhi.

“These, however, are yours at the moment. These glasses will protect your eyes while they heal. You will have to wear them for a couple of weeks. Once you are fine, turn them in at the nurse’s office and they will return them to us,”

“Thanks, I guess,”

“Well, do you want to see or not? Put the damn things on,”

Haruhi obeyed, and the world immediately shifted into focus. Officer Kosaka was a slim woman, her father’s age, with oval glasses, a low ponytail and a permanent frown. She was wearing thin silver gloves and her fire baton was curved across her chest like a bow. Haruhi looked down at her own legs. She was wearing a pair of ancient grey slacks that had belonged to her mother and a dark taupe sweater with permanent tea stains. Her last possessions in this world.

“Can I at least get back my school books before you send me of?” she asked, hoping for the impossible.

Officer Kosaka shook her head. “You will get new ones at Ouran,”

“What about my mother’s picture?” Haruhi’s mother had died of a burst appendix the night the Authorities had declared that surgeons with even one stain in their school files could not operate. She had bled to death on the slab when an Inlaw had forcibly removed her frantic doctor.

“You will have to access it online, like we all do,” said Officer Kosaka, standing up and pulling Haruhi by the elbow. “Off we pop,”

 

* * *

 

 

Later that night, curled in a ball in a foreign bed in the foreign land of Ouran, under a perfectly serviceable sheet that was nevertheless this side of chilly, Haruhi steeled her lungs and refused to give in to the impulse of sobbing hard into her pillow, even though officer Kosaka had ensured her that the individual pods where the inmates, “sorry, students,” slept were sound-proof and would only open from the inside from lights out till dawn.

Haruhi did not want to feel sorry for herself – that could very easily lead to accepting the situation and to stop looking for a way out. The curved walls of her pod were smooth and cold, and Kosaka had pointed out that there was a small sliding window that could allow a surveyor to look in, just to make sure that she was doing perfectly fine, of course.

She had seen no other “students” when she was led in. According to the late-night nurse, that was because all the charges had been asleep for hours when she arrived. They had given her a dark gray folded uniform that she knew, before even trying it on, that would be two sizes too big, a pair of mid-calf working boots, a pair of dark gray slippers to wear inside, and five days of clean dark gray underwear. The nurse had examined her eyes with a small light that made Haruhi cringe, and scolded officer Kosaka for using military-grade weaponry on children.

“I’m just following orders – and we didn’t know that she was going to be a normal kid. She could have perfectly been one of yours,”

“Just as you were,” replied the nurse. Haruhi, still with her Authorities’ issued glasses off, did not see her preparing the needle, but she definitely felt the prickle on her head.

“This will keep your pain under control tomorrow. Your might experience spontaneous tears – that is normal after being flashed,”

“But don’t let your classmates see them. Or they might think that you miss daddy,” added Kosaka.

Haruhi’s classmates, the invisible ones, lying in their sleep cocoons until the day came like some kind of larvae. She had heard horrible things about the people and the reasons why many places like Ouran existed, and she had made a point of only believing a fraction of them all her life – after all, a few of her friends had been sent away when the law waxed the wrong way – she refused to believe that they could have become monsters all of sudden.

And yet – after making officer Kosaka leave the room, the night nurse had performed a very thorough search on Haruhi’s body – looking for who knows what. If she had to sneak something in she would never hide it in any of those places. The nurse did not excuse herself, but clarified that these examinations were frequent and random, and that she should behave exactly as she had done right now and never resist them.

And in the back of her head, the fear of what might have happened to her father beating like a drum. He had not behaved any differently that night than he had done any other night, there had been nothing in his make-up, laughter or “seeya” that might have been foreboding. Even the photo tweet with that famous cook was normal – dad worked at a high-class red bar, and it attracted a lot of customers from the bored high spheres, seeking thrills that were barely this side of the law. Red bars –and the red district- were only off limits on certain days, and the waving of the law kept the favors received in them ever-changing and varied. “And thank our beloved ancestors for that,” dad used to say, “Or I would get so bored, so fast, and then I would become careless and I wouldn’t be any good at my job,”

 _Sweet late mother, what could he possibly have done_.

If he was hiding, as officer Kosaka had hypothesized. If nothing _terminally_ bad had happened to him. Or – and this was a thought that Haruhi kicked out of her head immediately, because she had stood on the rock-solid ground of her father’s love since she was born – if he had not abandoned her to save his own skin.

Haruhi curled onto herself a little more tightly. The next day she would be able to see more clearly, in every sense. She would examine her options with care, and never lose sight of her new goal –reach her father, safely, and then leave the country for good.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The horrible, terrible, not very good first day of Haruhi Fujioka in the Ouran Orphanage.

**Chapter 2**

The light was there again, insistent and hurtful, clawing at her eyelids. Haruhi reached out to get the glasses, barely on time to stand up as the pod started to twist around her – the low horizontal structure becoming tall and narrow as it flipped.

“Lights on,” says a light synthetic voice that came from the outside “Dormitories 1 through 3 initiating morning routine in ten seconds,”

A sleek plastic slider crawled up the pod walls, covering the bed, which was now standing up. The synthetic voice rolled down a countdown, and a whirling nose coming from somewhere up made Haruhi lift her chin and look at the ceiling just in time to feel a drop fall on her front.

Haruhi realized what was going to happen a second before lukewarm antiseptic water soaked her to the bone, underwear and all. The voice restarted the countdown, indicating that Dormitories 1 through 3 had fifteen seconds to scrub themselves clean before a final rinse, which Haruhi did, being extra careful around her eyes. Hot air blew from _up_ and her skin and the pod walls were dry in seconds.

“Dormitories 1 through 3, get dressed. You have twenty seconds to complete this task,”

Haruhi hurried up, slipping into the unisex briefs and thermal camisole, zipping up her uniform –which was, as she had suspected, amorphous on her frame- and sliding into her issued indoor slippers. There were no mirrors, and there was nothing that she wanted to do about her appearance except maybe becoming invisible, unnoticeable, transparent, and unseen.

She put her glasses on just before the pod’s door opened.

“Dormitories 1 through 3, step out of the pods and stand at attention for inspection,”

The door closed immediately behind her, and the pod went back to its original horizontal position. The air outside was dry and much cooler, and laced with the scent and the whispers of a lot of people breathing at the same time.

Haruhi looked to her left, and saw a boy about her age with a bowl cut and square black glasses standing straighter than an arrow, his hands behind his back and his legs slightly parted. She looked to her right, and there was a girl with long dark hair – just like she used to have mere hours ago- in the exact same position. The other wards of the state were already adopting the same posture.

Haruhi positioned herself just so, making sure to look ahead instead of sideways, and crossing her fingers inside her clenched fists behind her back, thinking very hard about happy memories, her mother teaching her the kanas and the letters, her father trying to teach her to sing, and failing, and laughing, the soft raindrops tapping the glass of her old classroom while she solved one equation after another.

She heard her fellow inmates holding their breath before she saw him enter the room – a tall and skinny man, so ancient that his curling moustache and beard looked like the ridges of a trilobite, and so close to death that his skin and the shape of his skull were undistinguishable. He wore the same uniform as the teenagers, only his was equipped with pockets and metal artifacts, and reflective metal glasses that gave him the appearance of a large insect.

“Dormitory 3, step up!” he said. Haruhi, who still did not know in which Dormitory she had landed, almost stepped forward, and only stopped when she saw that the two students to her left and right were immobile as statues and, just like statues, barely breathing.

She heard the step of a hundred students behind her, louder than a hundred drums.

“Dormitory 2, step up!”

Another hundred feet moved forward. Haruhi, who was in the first row, directly in front the old man, held her breath. So she was in Dormitory 1. She threw a quick look to the boy wearing the square glasses, to be sure that she used the same leg as he did to step forward when their row was called.

“Dormitory 1, step up!”

Haruhi thanked her mother’s ghost when she didn’t trip, or falter, or call attention to herself in any way. Her fingers were crossed so hard behind her back that they felt numb. She looked blankly ahead.

“Matsuyama, Jonouchi and _Hikaru_ Hitachiin!”

Two pairs of shoes behind her, and one flash of red to her left. She looked sideways at a slender boy with flaming hair, who was standing a foot before the Dormitory 1 row.

“Matsuyama, Jonouchi and _Hikaru_ Hitachiin, you will report to lab 51 for random search before your morning class,” shouted the old man. “I will be conducting it personally – so you’d better have been good,”

Haruhi shuddered. The nurse assigned to her had been cold but kind – there was nothing merciful in the voice of this old man. The redheaded boy saluted and nodded, stepping back in his row.

“Today is a very special day. A new student has joined our hallowed halls,” said the old man, “A very special student,”

Haruhi stiffened and considered whether playing dead would help her. That drill sergeant, with all his terrifying authority, was about to call everyone’s attention to her. She was going to be exposed to the eyes of all those roughed-up strangers, judged and appraised.

 _There isn’t much to see anyway,_ said Kosaka’s voice inside her head, snapping and mocking, and Haruhi prepared herself.

“This student’s family is currently at the top of the Authorities’ list, and is considered a top priority. This student is tainted. You have Ouran’s board permission to address this student as and it – no longer human. It has no rank. It will have no marks. It will have no rest,” the old man coughed roughly, wetly, and covered his mouth with the gloved palm of his hand. The fit only enraged him more, “It will have NO rest until every single one of its associates is caught and punished! Do you hear me?”

“AYE,” said the mass, like one man.

Haruhi wanted to tremble, but she could not move. She could barely move her lips at the same time as the others. The old man was walking down the row, and soon he would be in front of her and would point her out to all the others.

“It will have no friends. It will have no teachers. And it will not fall under the eye of the law,”

Cold terror seeped into Haruhi’s bones. Not being under the eye of the law meant that any recording that featured the condemned party would not be valid as a proof of crime. If somebody beat her, and it was caught on camera, it might as well have been whispered to the wind. The old man was giving her inmates permission to practically kill her with impunity.

He stepped closer and closer. He was now directly in front of Bowl Cut, and the next time he spoke he screamed on the boy’s face, who didn’t even flinch.

“Until every person in its family is in the hands of the Authorities! Do you understand, students?”

“AYE!”

Another step, and he was facing Haruhi. He was going to tell her to step forward, so that everyone could see her. She told herself that she would not react, that she would not tremble and that she would not cry. She would be still as the earth

                                                                                                              _which you will soon inhabit_

and indifferent like the stars, and she would not make a sound, even if the old man hit her or insulted her any further.

His breath was ragged and whistling, and his throat trembled when with every intake of air. His breath smelled like dry beetles and aspirin and something else, something wet and rotten and sickly sweet lay beneath. She saw with fascination how his lips crinkled and split, how his teeth were impossibly white and straight and sharp for his age, and she braced herself for what was to come.

“Ritsu Kasanoda!” he shouted, and it was only because one of her neurons was still working that Haruhi did not step up _again_ in reflex, so convinced she was that she was about to be marked.

_Wait, what?_

The old man had passed her by, and she risked a glance at both sides of her classmates, to see another boy, tall and knobby, muscled and long-haired and furious-looking, standing alone. Haruhi felt inexplicably grateful that she was not the one being called, and then her joy mixed with terrible guilt and sadness and rage.

“Take a good look at it. I forbid you to forget this face. I forbid you to show it kindness. I forbid you to acknowledge it, in any way, until its whole clan has answered for its crimes,”

To punctuate his words, the old man unsheathed the fire baton that he wore at his hip and he hit Ritsu Kasanoda hard behind his knees. The boy fell, and while he was fallen, the man hit him harder than his crackling frame could possibly allow across the back. Haruhi’s felt her fingernails cutting the skin on the palm of her hands like it was butter. She swallowed a prayer, and tried to think that at least the old man had not warmed the baton before punishing Kasanoda, that at least his skin and his flesh would not burn.

_That could have been me._

_Don’t be ridiculous – you did not do anything._

_Maybe that boy did not do anything either. Maybe it was only his family._

_Just like it was only your father?_

The old man kept hitting Kasanoda until they boy grunted, and then he stopped and carefully reattached his fire baton to his belt.

“Welcome to Ouran, beast,” and then, clapping his heels he addressed the Dormitories.

“Report to your first morning class. Dismissed!”

 

 

* * *

 

 

As soon as the old man left, bowl-cut boy turned to her. Haruhi saw the Hitachiin boy and two girls – one with pigtails and an inauspicious semi-smile, another one with curly hair and sharp glasses- disappearing behind the man into the corridor. Kasanoda was uncurling from his fetal position on the floor, and Haruhi saw with great relief that the students were just ignoring him instead of using those minutes before class to hurt him further.

“You were SO lucky that he did not actually inspect us today,” said the boy with the square glasses, reaching out,  “Where the fuck is your wristcell?”

“My what?”

“You are Fujioka, right?” asked the long-haired girl. She had a sweet round face and a very kind and efficient smile. Haruhi felt better just looking at her “Low risk student? Arrived last night?”

“Yes,”

“Low-risk students are allowed a wristcell,” she said, pulling up the sleeve of her own uniform and showing her a dark gray rubber circlet dotted with blinking lights. “It is, of course, a tracking device – but you can also use it to navigate the school, track your spending and your salary…”

“Wait, what? Spending and salary? I thought I was a ward –“

The boy rolled his eyes, and the girl shrugged. “Walk with us. We will get you your wristcell. We are Dormitory 1 delegates and supposed to take care of the new arrivals anyway,"

Haruhi glanced at Kasanoda, who was leaning on the wall, rubbing the back of his legs and putting on a very convincing stone face.

“You heard Vice Principal Kazama,” said the boy, with deep bitterness barely concealed with his martial stance. “Non-person status until further notice,”

“He probably prefers to be ignored right now,” said the girl, softer, “Wouldn’t you?”

Haruhi found it hard to argue her point.

“I’m Momoka Kurakano,” said the girl, stepping in on Haruhi’s right.

“Kazukiyo Soga,” said the boy, taking her right side. “Anyway, just because you are a ward it does not mean that you don’t have to pay your way. We all do. The uniform, the food, the security measures-“

“ The pods, the wristcells -”

“- they all cost money. You are lucky because you are allowed to work and apply that salary towards your upkeep, so if you work hard you will leave with only a minor debt, or even some savings,”

“That’s nice,” said Haruhi, trying to pay attention to her surroundings. The corridors were surprisingly pretty, with slender stone pillars and tall glass paneled windows – that were nonetheless very dirty. They overlooked a courtyard with a dry square depression on the middle. Beyond the fence stood handful of buildings that looked right out of an old-fashioned fairytale (only much grayer), and if she squinted she could see the tiny dots of other inmate-students heading out to the fields. Some of them were so small that they had to be very small children.

“Those at mid or high risk are not allowed to work, or their salary goes towards repaying the cost of their crimes to society. So when they leave, be it to the world or to another institution, they will still carry their debt,”

“I can’t believe they didn’t give you a wristcell last night. Nurse Okai never forgets anything. What’s wrong with your eyes?” asked Kurakano.

“Flash,”

“Ah – yes, right. Poor you. Well, if you start tearing up blink really fast and nobody will notice,”

They arrived to a tall and narrow metal door. Soga put his wristcell against a small panel that was next to the door frame. A green light blinked both on his wristcell and the panel.

“Object of your visit?” said a light voice through the panel.

“Retrieval of wristcell for new student,” said Soga.

“Permission granted. Please proceed. Time to your next slotted activity – less than 2 minutes,”

“Prepare to run really fast after he comes out,” adviced Kurakano, “Or we will be late,”

“Ok,” The door slid open and Haruhi saw a tall and narrow storage room lit only by the blinking lights of the robot shelvers. One of them scanned Soga from head to toe, and then slid back on interconnecting rails to retrieve Haruhi’s wristcell.

“What's our first class?”

“Modified History,” said Kurakano “It only appeared on the schedules last week, so you should be fine,”

“That’s weird. My old school has not taught History for decades,”

“Yeah, well, that’s what we thought –“ the small robot came back with a plastic circlet between its pincers. Soga gestured to Haruhi to come forward, and she instinctually extended her arm and let the mechanical creature come closer. “It’s not exactly useful, but it helps pass the time,” the robot extended its pincers and slid the wristcell around Haruhi’s naked wrist. The cold rubber warmed immediately and tightened against her skin.

“It’s taking your pulse and other data,” said Kurakano. Soga had already step out of the storage room and was poising himself to run. “They may look alike, but each wristcell is assigned to just one person and it cannot be hacked by another,”

The lights on the wristcell lit up one by one. There were seven in total, in the seven colors of the rainbow. They twinkled, almost as a salute, and then the grip relaxed. Haruhi felt the blood flowing back into her hand.

“Welcome to Ouran, Haruhi Fujioka,” said the robot. “Estimate time to your next slotted activity – 40 seconds,”

“Run!” yelled Kurakano.

She took Haruhi’s hand and pulled hard. The three of them dashed through the corridors and up the stairs, which were now almost empty of other students or teachers. Haruhi started panting barely 10 seconds after they had started their sprint. She was not used to physical activity.

Soga turned a corner, and just then they were overtaken by Hikaru Hitachiin – and his mirror image. Haruhi barely had time to think “twins” and then they had arrived to their destination, a large door that someone had cared a lot about in the past – ornate and barroque – but that now was surrounded by functional security panels and marked with a simple 1-A sign.

The twins, who had not even glanced in the trio’s direction, went in first and immediately sat down in the middle of the classroom. Soga got in second, but instead of looking for a seat he proceeded to the front and quickly typed something on a wall console. Haruhi saw rows of numbers and signs reflected on his glasses.

“Sit wherever you want,” said Kurakano, “But beware of the Hitachiins, they are fun but can be really mean,”

Kurakano joined Soga at the front of the classroom and used her wristcell to light up a second console on the other side of the wall. Synchronizing their movements, they pushed a button, and the lights went out. The blurry hologram of a middle-aged woman wearing a positively antique green cardigan and mid-calf skirt materialized. Haruhi, who had found a seat at the back of the class, noticed with mild interest that she was smoking a cigarette.

“Hello, monsters,” the lips of the hologram moved, but the sound came from all over the classroom. One of the Hitachiins hooted at it, the other laced his fingers and leant his chin on them. “Today we are going to be discussing historical legislative changes regarding enhanced interrogation techniques and their influence on the modification of the human genome,”

“Torture and mutants –” said one of the twins, followed by the other Hitachiin.

“– those are a few of my favorite things,”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Modified History was fascinating but practically useless. Haruhi felt frustrated by her inability to take notes, and annoyed at the sarcastic personality of the simulation. She was uncomfortably aware of how the hologram listed the legislative adjustments that had been made through history to allow for new interrogation and counter-terrorism techniques with just a tiny hint of distaste disguised with the intake of smoke. Holograms were not supposed to have personalities; they _were supposed_ to present the facts in the most objective possible fashion that would not create dissent. Haruhi, who was used to memorizing facts and figures that applied only to the everflowing here and now, did not appreciate the avalanche of previous versions of the law and the many-branched consequences of its subversion.

Because, what good did it do to know that fifty years ago humans had debated decrees and laws in the arena of the parlament? That had been a waste of time and resources. The Authorities System was much more efficient, shuffling current information and adjusting the laws to every individual situation, and taking the responsibility away from human hands. It was not perfect ( _moms sometimes died on slabs_ ) but it was better than they'd had in the past.

Her other classes were only slightly more practical,  but still weird and offbeat. She had Biology (where they learned the names and genus of edible plants, as well as animal husbandry for long-extinct animals), Physics (with a focus on Materials), Languages (computer ones – and Haruhi learned to her horror that she was supposed to start by memorizing binary code) and, to her utter astonishment, World Geography, another long-dead subject in schools everywhere.

In the life that she'd lead only 24 hours before, she would have been learning Statistics, Epidemiology, Law Systems and Application, Modern Allied Languages, Civic Responsibility and Economics. The kind of subjects that would actually prepare her for the State Exams.

It took her two hours to come to the realization that officer Kosaka had been lying. She would never be able to become a lawyer even if she had planned to stay in Ouran, because Ouran did not prepare its students for the system on the outside. If she graduated, she would be terribly unskilled for every aspect of the real world.

As if she needed another reason to find a way out fast.

The worst class of the day was, hands down, PE, and it was also the only class  held by flesh-and-bone teachers instead of holograms. It took place just before lunch and it lasted two hours. In the beginning, Haruhi thought that it was nice to be outside under the sunny sky instead of walking within Ouran's weaponized walls, but five minutes into the drill she would have insulted the sun if she’d had any air left in her lungs.

She focused on trying to memorize the campus instead.

The instructor, a tall and dark young man, guided them in an hour-long run across rice and barley fields. Other students were working in them, most of them with primitive-looking tools. Haruhi sneaked a glance at Kurakano, whose breath was ragged but even.

“We have field work every other day instead of PE,” she said, “But early in the morning. We are lucky,”

By the third field Haruhi’s throat was on fire and her knees were fit to explode. She bent over on the way back from the fourth field,  but only air and bile came out. She had not eaten anything since her dinner the night before.

Only sixteen hour ago she had been home. Only twenty six hours ago she had seen her dad for the last time.

Her stomach contracted harder, and more air came through. The rest of the group was at least a hundred meters away. She had to get up, or…

…or she could make a run for it. She could see the Ouran fences barely fifty meters away from where she was standing. If she rushed –

“Up,”

A shadow covered her, and she looked up. It was the instructor. He had very short, almost buzzcut black hair, broad shoulders and a fire baton across his chest. The tag on his uniform read “Morinozuka – 3A”.

_He was a student too. What was a student doing with a fire baton?_

She looked at his wristcell –because there was one- but it did not blink like Soga’s or Kurakano’s. He was not a delegate. He was something else.

She stood up on wobbly legs. A soft breeze cooled her cheeks. How foolish had been her last thoughts. She could barely keep herself together, and she had wanted to run away in plain sunlight? A drone would have shot her down in less than ten seconds, if it had taken her that long to collapse and start throwing up air again. She was lucky that Morinozuka had turned up.

“Run,” said Morinozuka, barely shaking his head in the group’s direction. His stance was calm and severe, and there was no aggression in his orders. He sounded almost reasonable –although her drumming heart was telling Haruhi that his request was not reasonable at all.

But she started running. He did not look like he was going to use the fire baton on her – his hands were behind his back, but better safe than sorry. She forced her throbbing leg muscles to go up and down again, and her lungs to breathe in and out, and she moved.

She lasted a minute before bending over again.

This time, she did not even look to the fence. The rows of growing grains, with their teeming insect life, were more than enough.

That was the first time that Haruhi had seen an insect, other cockroaches and flies up-close. An earthworm wiggled and sunk into the soil under the roots of a tall plant. The air caressed the barley. Haruhi’s chest heaved and she felt two strong hands on her shoulders.

“Done?”

She nodded, too weak to speak. Morinozuka handed her a handkerchief, made of the same light material as the regulatory underwear, and she dried her mouth and the sweat on her face and neck. The group had stopped a few hundred meters away and the students were doing push-ups on their own. She took off her glasses, dried the sweat that had caught on her eyebrows and lashes with her eyes tightly closed – she noticed that they were tearing up on their own, just as the nurse had predicted – but she wanted to be free of the weight of the glasses for a moment. She pinched the bridge of her nose. Her throat was parched.

Morinozuka had knelt down, and was crunching something on the palm of his hand with the help of a stone. He stopped for just a second to hand Haruhi a bottle of water.

“Drink,”

She drank, grateful, but the uncomfortable drumming on her chest did not diminish. She felt cold and hot all over. She had never been required to exercise in her life.

Morinozuka finished what he was doing, and extended his palm to show her a bunch of fine bone-white powder. He dipped his calloused fingertip on it and pressed it once under each of Haruhi’s nostrils.

“Breath,”

The effect was immediate. The burning and the shivering melted in a warm glow, and she stopped feeling the pain in her joints and at the soles of her feet. She felt light-headed and filled with air and sun, and every sound, every scent, every glimmer of the sun on the grain was a jewel. She reached to touch the skin above her upper lip in amazement, but Morinozuka shook his head.

“Now, run,”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

They had lunch in a round room made of glass. Haruhi, through the rosy glow of the drug that the instructor had pressed on her, did not feel hungry at all, and was actually happy about it. Now that she knew that she had to pay for everything she consumed in Ouran, she’d rather be as frugal as she could. Just in case her plans to escape took longer than expected.

Kurakano and Soga sat together, as did the Hitachiins. Neither of them looked towards Haruhi, who decided to go back outside and try to figure out how to join a work group other than the mandatory morning field work.

She had seen Soga addressing his wristcell to request lessons in the classroom, and, once she was out of earshot of her fellow students, she raised it to her mouth and whispered “work”.

The wristcell's yellow light blinked twice, and a neon yellow thin tube that ran through the walls lit up. It lead her back the way she came, to the glass room / cafeteria and through a door on the opposite side of the fields view.

She entered the kitchens, and vapor immediately misted her glasses. She took them off to clean them on her uniform, and when she put them back a small blond child was in front of her.

“Name and class,” he said with a stern tone very different from his sweet face. It was streaked with very fine white powder, almost like military make-up. He had a wristcell that lit up intermitently like Soga's. A delegate.

Haruhi blinked. The tag on the boy’s uniform said “Haninozuka – 3A”. Same as Morinozuka. She stood at attention.

“Fujioka – class 1A. I requested work to my wristcell and it brought me here,”

“It brought me here, _sir_ ,” corrected the midget. “Just in time. Can you cook?”

Ah, that might be a little problem.

“I know how to heat water and how to use a 3D food printer, sir,”

Haninozuka shook his head in despair. “Sweet ancestors, you are one of those spoiled rotten newbies,” Haruhi felt heat rise to her cheeks, and she held her hands tighter behind her back. “I will rephrase that question. If I give you a knife and tell you to cut vegetables will you manage to cut the turnips and not your fingers as well as to repress your natural impulse to stab every other kitchen hand?”

“Of course, sir,” Haruhi said, confident about her knife-handling prowess. “I will do my best, sir,”

“Great! Here is the knife,” he handed her a glistening monstrosity with a blade larger than her forearm, “And there are the turnips,” he pointed at a group of at least twenty waist-high buckets overflowing with the root vegetable. “You have four hours to peel them all for dinner. Try not to bleed,” he examined her eyes, not unkindly, “Or cry too much over them. They taste bad enough without any extra condiments. Do you want to be paid with credits or with sugar?”

Haruhi blinked. Was that a joke? Sugar? What use did she have for sugar? She doubted that dental care was stellar inside Ouran’s walls.

“Before you answer, I must tell you that this month we have access to leftover Winter Holidays candy, almost fresh from Tokyo. The candy canes are a little crushed, and most of the flavors are peppermint and gingerbread and, lord of popsicles, eggnog, but other than that they are almost 100% pure,”

“Pure what, sir?”

“Pure sugar, of course. So?” he winked an eye at her. Looking around, Haruhi saw that the other twenty or so kitchen aids all had lollipops on their mouths, or were popping gummy bears, or chewing the heads off plainly decorated gingerbread men. But she was still not hungry.

“Credits, sir,”

“Are you sure?” he asked in a sing-song tone. Some of the kitchen hands giggled.

“100% sure, sir,” Haruhi said. She had never cared for sweets. Haninozuka sighed, as if she had tripped over the extremely low bar that he used to measure people’s worth, and handed her a hair net. Haruhi fixed it over her head, pulling the bangs away from her glasses. He spoke to his wristcell. “Fujioka, 1A, Approved Kitchen Access,”

“Then get started. Four hours of unskilled labor will award you 400 credits. That should cover your school expenses for today. A very _wise_ choice,” he said gladly, tying his apron with a very simple knot, “but maybe not the _right_ one,”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

She bled over a few turnips before getting used to the huge knife that Haninozuka  had given her. She had to cut the roots into thin circles and put them in the large pots that the other kitchen hands pushed close to her station as they finished washing them after the lunch shift. She had to add the turnips to the bottom until they covered about a third of each pot, then settle them on the protein station, where the dinner-shift chef would add other ingredients.

Two hours into the job, everybody was done with work and Haruhi had only managed to fill a handful of pots. She was alone in the kitchen, and except for her soft breathing and the sound of the knife against the chopping board, all was silent. She was never going to be able to complete that task on time.

She heard the hesitant footsteps before she saw him, and her knife stopped in mid-air. She had to make a conscious effort  to bring it back down, to continue chopping as if she had seen nothing.

Kasanoda was watching her from the door. Beyond his head she could see the glass cafeteria and then, further down, the darkening fields. He didn’t say anything, and Haruhi did not know what to say, or if she was allowed to say anything at all to him.

She finally looked up and nodded, and he came in, limping and holding on to stools and tables. Haruhi’s guilt and pity blossomed like a drowned flower, and she looked at him in the eye and nodded again, pointing her eyes to the short parapet offered by the assembly of buckets of turnips. He hobbled over and sat down on the floor, crouched his back and closed his eyes twice in gratefulness.

Officer Kosaka’s advice came back to her. She should not be alone and vulnerable in Ouran. She should not join a gang. She dismissed the cold voice of the policewoman, and instead opened the loudest faucet in the kitchen to drown all sound. Just in case, she gestured to Kasanoda instead of speaking, crouching down till her eyes were level with his. She pointed at her mouth and then rubbed her stomach. He shook his head, and looked hopeful, although his lips remained tight and serious.

Haruhi walked over to the locked fridge that held leftover food from the lunch shift. The rations inside would be either recycled or composted or fed to the night-shift workers. She lifted her wristcell to the fridge panel, and it opened with barely a click. She took out two portions of rice with soy cubes. If Haninozuka questioned her, she would say that those were her allotted portions and that she had paid for them with her work anyway – she should be free to do whatever she wanted with them. She got a pair of chopsticks from a drawer, and walked back to the boy hiding over to the turnip fortress.

Kasanoda snatched the rations from her hands and ate them greedily, barely stopping to breath between bites. She resumed her chopping while he devoured the rice.

It did not take him long, and Haruhi could feel his eyes on the back of her neck. It made her nervous. She knew nothing about him. He could be planning to flee – just like she was. But he looked a lot more ruthless, and the way the Vice Principal had welcomed him did not make her think that he came from a family pursued for political dissention.

She shook those thoughts away. Nobody deserved to be treated like an animal. Nobody chose their families. Kasanoda could not be much older than she was. She had fed him. That was all.

Except that he stood up and suddenly pushed her hard against the same fridge that she had just opened for him. The attack was so sudden that Haruhi could not even scream before her head hit the metal and his hand clasped over her mouth, stifling all sound. She even forgot that she was holding a _huge_ knife until the moment when his hand closed around his wrist, pressing a tendon that relaxed her whole fist, and her only weapon clattered on the floor. He took her wristcell hand and pulled it into the sink full of water, under the loud faucet.

He held her like that for at least a minute. Her wet hand started to go numb from the cold.

“You are new too,” he finally said. His voice was deep and it rasped, as if he had screamed or inhaled a lot of smoke in the last hours.

Haruhi nodded.

“So you want  to leave?”

Haruhi saw no point in denying it. She shrugged, holding his gaze.

“Don’t. There are drones flying all over the fields and beyond, all the way down to the city,”

Haruhi rolled her eyes. She had figured that out on her own.

“The only way out is to the sea,” he added. “And there are no ships in the sea – too dangerous,”

“I’m going to take the knife now,” said Kasanoda, “But I’m only going to use it to cut down those fucking turnips, because you just helped me and that’s what’s fair. I don’t hate these people enough to have them eating finger stew tonight. OK?”

Haruhi nodded again, and Kasanoda dropped both of her hands, crouched to take the huge knife from the floor and turned around, walking to the cutting station. He started chopping off perfect circles at lightning speed, as Haruhi watched him from the fridge, wondering if he was going to keep the knife and how could she possibly take it back if he did before anyone noticed.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

Kasanoda left (without the knife, for Haruhi’s relief), when there was only half a bucket left, “so that it wouldn’t smell fishy.” The chef in charge of the night shift was Matsuyama, one of the girls that had been designated for a surprise inspection that morning, and she looked impressed with Haruhi’s progress.

“I hate those things - they are so bland. But still, fresh produce. We should count our blessings. You did a great job, Fujioka. I would tell you to go to enjoy dinner, but I see that you already had your rations,”

“I was very hungry,” said Haruhi, looking at her feet. Matsuyama nodded with sympathy. She had piled her two braids on top of her head before covering them with the kitchen net. “If you have Morinozuka as a sports instructor, I know why you were hungry. Still, I cannot give you anything else – wait,” she reached inside one of her uniform’s pockets and pulled out a perfectly rounded mandarin orange the size of her fist, which still had a few leaves attached. “Here. Enjoy,”

And then she touched her mouth with her index finger, and said something that Haruhi had not heard for at least ten years, from her mother’s lips.

“May the kinder months be long,”

“May the starlight warm our winters,” Haruhi answered automatically, stunned.

Matsuyama laughed and dismissed her with a martial salute, as if she had not just uttered the most unexpected poem in the world, and Haruhi left the kitchen holding the mandarin orange as if it was a living creature made of glass, counting it as a blessing.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Her wristcell buzzed and the blue light came up, followed by a blue tube down the wall. Haruhi followed it to the nurse’s office, concealing the mandarin in the many folds of her oversized uniform.

The door to her office opened silently. Nurse Okai was typing at her console, and a pale, dark-haired student with glasses was –apparently- taking inventory of the medicine cabinet. He looked down to Haruhi with mild interest and then resumed his task with cool efficiency. His tag read “Ootori – 2A”.

“Please, take off your uniform,” ordered the nurse. “You can keep your underwear; this is not going to be a cavity search. I’m just going to weigh you,”

“But you just weighed me last night,” said Haruhi, stalling for time. The Ootori boy pointedly took a set of rolled up syringes, unrolled and counted them, one by one. He then typed the amount in a small tablet.

“It’s for security purposes. We have to make sure that you have not lost any significant mass since you came in. Some students have been used as mules for all kinds of substances in the past,”

“I see,” said Haruhi, still hesitating. Ootori clicked one last button and the tablet shut down. He was done with his inventory, and he stepped from behind the nurse’s slab to stand at attention, hands behind his back and a servile half-smile.

“Take off your uniform off now, Fujioka, or I will have to tell my assistant to take it off for you,” said the nurse. “We don’t have the time nor the inclination for a civil purity show,” she grumbled as Haruhi slipped out of her shoes and zipped down the front of her uniform. She folded it carefully on top of the slab.

“Good. Now step on the scale. Ootori, please note down if there is any weight difference from today at 2 AM,”

The scale beeped, and Haruhi blurted out, suddenly fearing that the nurse might think that she had smuggled something inside, “I did not eat anything today and we run four fields,”

“The system will take it into account,” said Ootori, taking her wrist with his gloved hands and clicking it against the tablet. The blue light lit up. “Or it would, if it was true. Nurse Okai, Fujioka consumed her two allotted rations during her kitchen shift,”

“Trying to get an extra portion, huh? Spoiled city brats,” said the nurse. Haruhi blushed, and nodded. She would probably be in even worse trouble if they knew about Kasanoda.

“Yes, madam. I’m sorry, madam. I’m just so hungry,”

“Your body will have to adjust,” nurse Okai addressed Ootori, “Results?”

“No significant weight changes,”

“Excellent. Did you study the eye diagrams last night?”

“Yes, nurse Okai,”

“Do you want to do her eye examination?”

“I will do my best, nurse Okai,”

“I will go and join the other officers for dinner, then. When you are done, close the office and escort Fujioka to the Dormitories. I want her in her pod in one hour,”

“Yes, nurse Okai,”

“Good night, Ootori,”

Once the nurse left, all trace of servility disappeared from the boy. Haruhi felt it lifting like a cloak. He ordered her to sit on the slab and look up to him, and he took off her glasses and put them next to her, unfolded and lying on the glass.

“Be careful,” she said, reaching out to straighten them. He smacked her hand with the tablet, not very hard but firmly enough. She let them lay.  “ But I need those,” she said.

Ootori was washing his hands and forearms meticulously, water and antiseptic up to his elbows. He dried them just as carefully, and put on fresh clinical gloves.

“Not for long. Look up and don’t blink,” said Ootori. Holding her face with one hand, he applied one drop to each eye. Haruhi heard a click, and saw a blue light moving,

“Notice anything different from yesterday?”

“I can see colors without the glasses,” said Haruhi, following the blue dot.

“That is a favorable sign. Look sideways,” Haruhi obeyed, and Ootori tilted her head just a little. “What about now?” he asked.

“I can’t see anything,”

“No peripheral vision,” he said aloud, probably to the medical diary. And then, in exactly the same tone and moving her head to the opposite side, “I know that it wasn’t you who ate your rations,”

“What? Of course I did. I just confessed,” as if to betray her, Haruhi’s stomach groaned and gurgled. She blushed again, and bit her lip, then tried not to bite her lip because that looked definitely guilty. Ootori chuckled, and she heard him ripping plastic, tapping something. The blue dot had dissappeared.

“Don’t move. I’m about to drive a very big needle into your optic nerve to accelerate the healing process tenfold. You do not want me to miss, do you?”

“No,” said Haruhi with a very weak voice. The fact that she could not see a thing made everything worse – she _remembered_ the size of the syringues that he had been counting and she could perfectly _imagine_ the needle.

“Your weight was lower than it should have been after lunch and dinner, and you do not fit the profile of a living mule. So the question is, if you didn’t eat your rations, who did? There was nobody else in the kitchen – I checked the records – and it was definitely your wristcell that opened the fridge door,” he stabilized her whole head between his elbow and his palm, and Haruhi felt a terrible pressure on her left eye. She moaned.

“Be still. It will be over soon,” said Ootori. “There is only one non-person in the premises. I hope that you have not been feeding the beast,”

The pressure stopped. “Do not touch your eye,” said Ootori. “I’m highly competent but I have no cure for injuries derived from stupidity,”

“How do you know that?”

“I am a sysadmin,” said Ootori, simply. Haruhi did not know what that meant. “I have access to everything that everyone does – especially anyone that enjoys the advantages of a wristcell,”

He nestled her head on the nook of his other arm, and repeated the operation. Haruhi was ready for the pressure of the needle this time. She gritted her teeth, and counted down from ten. The pain lasted eleven.

Her eye sockets felt battered and swollen, but she could sense the shape of things beyond the fog. It hurt, though. She closed them again. Ootori let go of her head and she heard him unfolding her uniform.

“Not to mention, those glasses you are wearing?” Ootori went on through the soft rustling of fabric “They capture everything you see and store it for later. Officer Kosaka must not trust you, or maybe she hopes to entrap you so that you can help her catch your father. You should keep your eyes closed. The light is too bright right now,"

Haruhi’s heart sank. She thought about her day, about all the things that she had done and looked at and said, and she was horrified. She had considered escaping and looked to the fields beyond the fence. She had discussed it with THE only person that she was not supposed to acknowledge. A stupid act of kindness that was going to backfire spectacularly.

“At the very least, your low-risk status will be revoked. At the worst - ” he softly slid Haruhi’s legs into the uniform pants and gently pushed the small of her back so that she stood up again. “- at the worst you will be taken away from Ouran and turned against your family. You can cry if you want, it’s good for your eyes. Just don’t touch them,” Haruhi put her hands along her sides, and he put his hand on her shoulder. “I’ll walk you to your pod,”

“Why are you telling me about the glasses?”

“Would you have preferred not to know?” Ootori asked as he closed the door. Two short beeps. Haruhi felt the weight and the shape of the mandarin orange along her left thigh, bouncing as they walked.

“No, what I mean is that you don’t know me. You have no reason to be nice,”

“Oh. Those are two grave misconceptions. First of all, I do know who you are,” they turned left, “Haruhi Fujioka, 15, ward of the Authorities, dead mother, missing father, first of her class for nine years straights, wants to be a lawyer – sorry, wanted to be a lawyer, because if you are as smart as your records state you have probably realized that “lawyer” is not a career option that is available to you anymore. Am I missing something?” Ootori pet her shoulder twice, false sympathy if there ever was. “To the right now, honor student, and then we will go down three flights of forty seven steps each. Mind your feet - the nurse station is closed for the night,”

They were going down – Haruhi knew that they had gone far deeper and beyond the Dormitory level and the air around her was growing stale and cold. He was not guiding her to her pod.

“Where are we going?”

“Your second statement, that I have no reason to be nice to you, is also wrong. I have eighty million reasons. How are your eyes feeling, by the way?”

“Better. Where are we going? And what do you mean by eighty million reasons? Because I’m not rich. I don’t care what you think life in Tokyo is like, you eat better here than I ever did at home,” she shrugged her shoulder out of Ootori’s grip and, although she regretted it immediately, tried to back up the way they had come. She reached out with her hands, feeling for a wall, anything to hold on to, anything at all. When Ootori spoke again, he did not raise his voice, but Haruhi felt the iron beneath the velvet as if he was pointing it directly at her heart.

“Calm down and take my hand, Fujioka. You could trip, and the fall is long,”

But she’d had enough for a day.

“Where are we?” asked Haruhi. “I’m tired of being dragged around like a thing! The last 24 hours have been the worst of my life and just because I can’t see anything it doesn’t mean that you people,” she backed up the stairs again, almost tripping like he had predicted, “can treat me like an animal that you can just carry around,”

“Then stop behaving like a frightened dog,” she shook her head and backed up one more step, but her stupid uniform caught on something, something that ripped and snapped, and her feet flew from under her and then she was falling.

Ootori caught her. Haruhi could feel his quiet anger seething through his palms, and she was almost sure that he was going to hit her. But the anger lifted after a moment, just like his false servility had, and the presence on the other side was just collected and professional and calm. He wiped the involuntary tears off her cheeks with his thumbs, and then tilted her head up and down, to one side and to the other, probably checking her eyes again.

“I told you so,” he said, and Haruhi’s mouth twitched up involuntarily in a nervous smile. He laughed softly. “You do not know anything about me and you don’t have to be nice. You do not have to trust me either, but right now you do not have any alternative. So here is what I propose: listen to us, for only thirty minutes, and then you can decide for yourself what you want to do with the rest of your life,”

The descent lasted years, and neither of them said anything else for a while, until Ootori talked again.

“You are probably still in shock about yesterday’s events, which is why I will not take your little upflare into any consideration, but I hope for your own good that intelligent activity will soon resume between your ears,”

“You should work on your bedside manners if you want to be a doctor. That’s the worst get-well-soon that I have ever heard,”

“Who said that I wanted to be a doctor?” They hit the bottom of the staircase, and the floor was even harder and colder, and slightly irregular. Haruhi had the feeling that they were walking on rugged concrete.

She could smell them from a hundred meters away – the electric burning scent was unmistakable, as was the buzzing sound, like a million bees working on a million flowers, and the gusts of warm wind on her face. The sound only got stronger as they came closer, and Haruhi’s heart beat faster and faster, a bird facing the blades of a helicopter.

_But surely not, it cannot be,_

“You can open your eyes now – the light is dim enough,” said Ootori, and she did. Her jaw dropped, and had his iron grip not been holding her up, she would have fallen to her knees. It was impossible, but in front of her there were the two massive pillar structures that ran Honshu, twin servers operational and running, their fans moving to cool their circuits and their lights blinking red, showing the world that they were alive. Through the circuits of those super machines ran the lives and deaths of the eighty million people of Honshu.

She was in front of the Authorities.

“Oi, Kyouya, who is that?” said a familiar voice from above.

“Yeah, we thought that you were going to bring THE Kasanoda,” a red head appeared twenty meters above their heads, followed by a second, identical one. The twins, Hikaru and the other. They slid down identical ropes to the floor and landed like monkeys.

“It’s Fujioka,” said another voice, younger and kinder but no less surprised. “She cut up twenty six buckets of turnips today,”

“An admirable skill,” said Ootori, letting go of Haruhi and walking towards the twins. “Change of plans. Where is Mori?”

“Hunting,”

“Ah. Well, I wouldn’t want to interrupt him then. Gentlemen, let me introduce you to Haruhi Fujioka,”

“We already met her,”

“Yeah, she is in our class. In cahoots with Soga and Kurakano, we think,”

“Not much to look at,”

“Maybe if her uniform fit better,” said one of the twins, zipping down the front of her uniform. Haruhi slapped his hand away. “Hey, I just wanted to see if you are as flat as you seem to be,”

“She is,” said Ootori curtly. “And Tamaki?”

“Running late,” said the twin that had not tried to manhandle Haruhi. “Are you a virgin? You totally look like one,”

“With hair like that, she must be,” said his brother, ruffling hair. “And what’s wrong with your eyes? They are all bloodshot and fucked up,”

Haruhi turned to Ootori, and he put his palms up. “All perfectly normal, I assure you. Tomorrow morning they will feel as new,”

“They don’t look “as new” to me,” said the other twin, coming closer. Haninozuka waved his hand in front of Haruhi’s face.

“How many fingers am I holding up, Fuji-chan?”

“Just the middle one. Go to hell,”

He giggled and, to her annoyance, kissed her lightly on the cheek. “I think that you are awfully cute even if you are a virgin,”

“I told you that her eyes are fine,” said Ootori. He was over by one of the Authorities, checking the red lights against some information in his tablet. “Now please, step away from them,”

“Yes, children,” boomed a voice from the staircase. “Listen to your mother, and step away from our honored guest, who will be the key in opening the door to true freedom and justice, so that we can take back this terrible world that was promised to us as our kingdom and make it new again, like the eyes of this beautiful young woman,”

“Are you referring to me as the mother of these two?” asked Ootori with incredulity, looking from the approaching figure to the twins.

“And to her as beautiful?” asked a twin, pointing at Haruhi.

A young blond man came into the light. He was wearing only the pants of the uniform and the tank top covered his chest. His hair moved like wheat, and he had sparkling eyes filled with passion that Haruhi could have sworn were purple, but that was surely a trick of the intermittent red light of the Authorities. His work boots were so polished that they glistened, and Haruhi was so mesmerized by the shininess that she did not see how close he was until he was practically on top of her.

His face was an interesting mix. Haruhi could tell immediately that he was not purely Japanese, but that did not take away the charm from his features.

The slobbery kiss that he planted on her did that.

Haruhi felt palms on her cheeks, and then tongue, and then, to her horror, unwanted and unnecessary saliva, and she pushed him away with all her strength, galvanized by the terrible, terrible day that she was wearing on her shoulders.

Ootori cleared his throat. “Please. Everyone. Stay the hell away from her face until further notice,”

Tamaki, who had not even looked at Haruhi before planting one on her, noticed her eyes for the first time and made a grimace that he barely concealed before pulling away and muttering a very small ,“sorry,”. He resumed his Don Juan posture while Haruhi wiped her mouth.

“Welcome to the Host Club, young maiden,”

“Not for long, if you let us do your hair!” hooted one of the brothers.

“Or we can let you do us for a small fee,” said the other.

“A reasonable fee,” corrected Ootori, still controlling the server.  “Don’t get into the habit of underselling yourselves,”

“Please ignore them,” the blond guy sighed and leant against the closest Authority in a fetching pose. “They have no manners, having never lived outside the walls of Ouran, ignorant of the ways of the world,”

“What the fuck are you talking about? We were all born outside!” said the manhandling twin.

“In any case, fair maiden with eyes the shade blooming carnations, welcome,” he smiled, and Haruhi almost felt disgusted with herself when her rage melted away, “I hope that you will help us in our quest,”

“What quest?”

“Were you not listening or what?” said one of the twins.

“We are going to take back the country,” clarified the other.

“Using these beauties,” Tamaki was almost bursting with pride as he softly knocked the server where he was resting.

And then it hit her. She had done the one thing that officer Kosaka had told her not to. _That shit will follow you for the rest of your life_ , she had said, and Haruhi had grown overconfident and thought that she had been exaggerating, and now here she was.

She had joined a gang of madmen.

Fainting was not at all like she had pictured it. She felt a terrible weariness creeping down from her head. She just had enought time to decide to fall on her chest or on her back. She settled for her back, because if she fell on her front Ootori was going to throw a fit about the state of her eyes and she did not want to be awoken from her first fainting ever with a slap.

 

* * *

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading this crazy science fiction mash-up up to its third chapter. Your enthusiastic reviews have really encouraged me to keep going!
> 
> There are many influences to this work, other than Ouran - those of you who like sci-fi might recognize Ender's Game practical elements, ideas directly remixed from Cory Doctorow essays, many Hunger Games and Interstellar details, a dash of Ishiguro's Never Let me Go and, of course, a lot of Psycho Pass (which is a fantastic anime series - go watch it now!). There are three other main works of literature and cinema that I absolutely love but that I cannot mention now, but that have majorly influenced the plot. I'll rave about them in the appropriate chapters ;).
> 
> Bon appétit!

**Chapter 3**

“Tamaki, mouth-to-mouth is not really necessary,”

“But the safety holoclass said –“

“– in case there’s no breathing. She is,”

“We should call Takashi – he had some cottonballs earlier,” said Haninozuka, combing a strand of hair away from Haruhi’s eyes.

“He is hunting! Who knows how far he is. And he already gave her some when she almost choked on PE,”

“So what? A bit more ain’t gonna kill her. We take it all the time and nothing has happened to _us_ ,”

“That’s because you are addicts, assholes! We are not going to corrupt the only state-educated mind in our midst with cot,”

“Well…” Ootori said softly, and waited to speak until the other four boys had quieted down, “If we are her only providers, she might be more amenable to our point of view,”

A beat of silence.

“Man, you are evil,” said the twins in unison.

“Just pragmatic,” Ootori approached Haruhi, and pressed two fingers to her throat. “She will be _fine_. Stop overreacting and go do something useful while she awakens. Have you finished cleaning the higher levels?”

“No…”

“Are awaiting a formal invitation from the empress of roaches?”

Haruhi heard the twins skulking away and climbing up the servers. She had woken up when Tamaki had pressed his very invasive mouth to hers for the second time that evening, and she was committed to doing her best impression of roadkill. Maybe if she didn’t move they would go away. It would be difficult to find her way back into the Dormitories, but not impossible. She just had to go up.

“I will go look for Takashi,” said Haninozuka.

“Be careful,” said Tamaki. “And don’t rush – we have all night,”

Haninozuka’s soft footsteps left Haruhi’s proximity. She sensed the attention of the two remaining boys diverting from her and focusing on something else – through their silence and their very slow breathing. A metallic sound and a waft of breeze told her that Haninozuka had left the underground and gone outside.

The metallic sound ( _a lid? a door?)_ echoed again, and Haruhi heard the relieved sighs from both boys. They had a way out, that sigh said, but it was not completely secure. She filed that information away for future use.

Ootori typed the minutes away, and the tension between the two built until Tamaki addressed him. He sounded tired.

“Not that I mind recruiting an untrained civilian to join our revolution, but I would like to understand why you didn’t bring Kasanoda too,”

“Tamaki, _we_ are untrained civilians,” pointed out Ootori without interrupting his typing.

“Less and less every day. Our mind is set to the drums of change. Hers is set to – I don’t know – whatever city people worry about. Half-off sales and cog-turning examinations,”

Haruhi felt slightly offended – she actually loved getting a good food deal. Thinking about it made her belly rumble again.

“God of thunder, how did that bit make that noise?”

“That’s the song of two missing rations,” said Ootori. “She gave them to Kasanoda,”

“Did he cut her or something?”

“No – she did it out of the _kindness_ of her heart,”

“Well, that’s very generous but very dumb. Noble,” he paused to change his posture. “Maybe she could be a good influence for the twins,”

Haruhi could practically hear Ootori rolling his eyes.

“Think, Tamaki – now he owes her. He probably sees her as his only friend in here. He knows that she started at the same time, and she’s been the only student who has acknowledged him as a person instead of a murderer,”

Haruhi’s heart skipped a beat. _A murderer?_

“He probably thinks that she is a state-planted honeypot,” said Tamaki. “He is used to people trying to trick him,”

“Of course – because honeypots usually look like blind twelve year olds with mops on their heads,”

“Maybe that’s his type, and the police know, and she _is_ a honeypot,” argued Tamaki, too vehemently to be taken seriously. “Maybe she is going to report on us!” now he sounded like he was starting to believe his own nonsense. Ootori smacked him on the head.

“Or maybe you’re an idiot. The fact is that Kasanoda now trusts Fujioka, which could be a huge asset for establishing a working relationship with him. _If_ we get her to join us, that is. Besides, I have every reason to believe that her officer in charge is going to come back soon to take her for a tour,”

“To Tokyo?”

“Yes,”

Tamaki’s voice lightened with excitement.

“That would be fantastic! She could f-”

The metal door banged again, and the cool night air breezed in. “They are back!” said Tamaki with glee, suddenly moving away before finishing the phrase.

“Did you bring meat?!” shouted one of the twins from above.

“Meat and better!” said Haninozuka, and his voice bounced across the vaulted room. “Come down and see!”

Haruhi heard a terrible screeching noise, metal scratching hard against the concrete floor, which made her grit her teeth. _That doesn’t sound like a dead animal._

“You might want to stop pretending to sleep for the midnight feast,” said Ootori, the whole force of his silk-whip voice lashing at her.

Haruhi opened her eyes. He was already walking away.

The scratching sound continued, and as if that wasn’t enough, Haruhi’s stomach roared again. She stood up slowly. The part of her brain that was not busy thinking about food knew perfectly well that her body was guiding her decision to join the boys, who had formed an expectant semicircle. The twins’ arms were blackened with soot up to their shoulders, and they were loudly encouraging Haninozuka and Morinozuka –it was her morning instructor who had been out hunting, and she should definitely be more surprised than she felt- and Tamaki had given up his teen idol posturing to fidget like an overexcited puppy.

“Drone down!” shouted a Hitachiin, – _Hikaru?_ \- and his brother, Tamaki and Hani cheered and clapped. Even Ootori was smiling.

“Excellent work, Mori,”

“How did you bring it down?” asked Tamaki, caressing the aluminum carcass of the raptor. “It is beautiful,”

“And you turned off the tracker,” said Ootori, checking the underbelly of the beast. “Wait, it’s not even here – what did you do with it?”

“I attached it to a crow,” said Morinozuka. Like Tamaki, he was only wearing the regulatory tank top over his torso, but in his case it was not for show - his muscles were bulging and his skin was glistening after the hunt. “And I stuck our own tracker to the bird, so we can get it back,” he wiped the sweat off his front, and clapped the drone’s head, almost lovingly. Then he reached to his belt and untied a primitive bag that he threw in the twin’s general direction. Kaoru caught it.

“Rabbits!” he exclaimed, delighted after looking inside. Haruhi’s stomach twisted when she imagined the dead animals inside the bag, but something deeper and ancient within her chest licked its lips and settled to pounce. Her mouth was dry as cotton.

“– and wild sweet potatoes,” listed Haninozuka, “I’ll get the convector,”

“I’ll get the water and the moonshine!”

Mori, still smiling with pride at his feat, looked up and noticed Haruhi for the first time. His eyebrows rose to his scalp line in surprise, but he recovered quickly and nodded softly in her direction. She nodded back.

Haninozuka carried a rickety metal box, roughly the length, depth and width of his legs, to a corner of the vaulted underground room. He pressed a switch and red light zigzagged inside the box. It was a portable oven. Next to him, Hikaru and Kaoru were efficiently skinning the rabbits using thin makeshift knives. Their hands still black from their work on the twin servers, and their fingers left soft traces of soot over the pink flesh of the animals. They settled the fur in a nearby barrel and, once they were done cleaning the rabbits, put them inside the convector. As soon as they touched metal a delicious, savory scent unlike anything that Haruhi had ever smelled filled the air. Her mouth watered.

“Our _princess_ is up!” said Tamaki, who was still hugging the drone’s belly with his whole body, like a long-lost teddy bear. His smile was just a tiny bit teasing, and his teeth were very white. “Are you hungry? You must be hungry. Stay for dinner. Where there’s enough for six, there’s enough for seven,”

“Are you going to drug my meal?” asked Haruhi, although her stomach and that amazing smell had already decided that yes, she was staying.

“Only if you want us too,” said Tamaki, winking at her, at the same time that Ootori said, “ _Please_. Drugs are expensive,”

“Eh, princess Fujioka, if you stay to eat you gotta help!” said the meaner twin (Hikaru – she was almost sure now). The other took a bunch of sweet potatoes from the bag with ash and blood hands and juggled them, finishing the show by launching them at Haruhi in elegant arcs. “Catch!”

She managed to miss all but the last, and they rolled on the floor.

She picked them up one by one. She had never seen vegetables that irregular and rough. “I don’t think this is very hygienic,” she said, using a bunch of hanging cloth at the front of her uniform as an improvised basket. “Where can I clean them?”

The boys laughed.

“Yes, worry about dirty wild potatoes when there’s an armed drone in the same room!”

Tamaki stopped hugging the raptor and backed up as if it had burned his chest. He squealed. “Mori! Is the drone armed?!”

Mori had joined Haninozuka and, together, they were surveying the rabbits. He shook his head.

“It’s a surveyance model – it looks and reports to the armed ones,” clarified Ootori.

“Good, good. Do not fear the drone, princess,”

“Yeah, fear the blond ass next to the drone,” said Hikaru, rolling a knife between his fingers.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

There were six rabbits and seven people, so Tamaki decided that everyone would give a bit of theirs to Haruhi. They ate in the same ration boxes that they used at the cafeteria – it was surely Haninozuka who was sneaking them out, using his privileges as chef and delegate.

“Why are you so fucking formal?” asked Hikaru, digging into his rabbit’s breast. His fingers were greasy, although both he and Kaoru had ended up washing their hands with antiseptic that Ootori carried around.

“Everybody uses their family names here,” she said, pointing at her own tag, “And Hitachiin is yours, isn’t it? I’m just being polite,”

“Nah, that’s just the place where we come from,” said Kaoru. He passed her half a leg. Haruhi took a small bite, and then a much bigger one. It was delicious. She rarely ate meat – it was extremely expensive, when you could find it, and for the price of a meager steak she could buy a month’s worth of tofu. Living on the countryside could have some advantages. Maybe Morinozuka could teach her to hunt.

Then she remembered that she’d have to kill a furry living thing with her hands and she shook the idea from her mind.

“They had to put something in the file,” said Hikaru, probably thinking that she was shaking her head about their names.

She looked at the boys around her. “So you all are named after places?”

“No, only Hikaru and Kaoru,” said Haninozuka. “Takashi’s named after his mom – she was a student here too, and he was born in Ouran,”

“So you’ve never left the school?” Haruhi asked, looking at Mori. He had put back the uniform jacket, which was as tight around his broad back as Haruhi’s was loose.

Morinozuka shrugged, looking at the rabbit and the drone, and then in the direction of the exit.

“Mori knows his way around better than any of us. And the school trusts him implicitly – his loyalty is perfect to a fault,” said Ootori, “Hence the fire baton. He’s the only one of us legally allowed to carry a weapon,”

“Yes, well, he is supposed to only use it on students that misbehave,” said Kaoru.

“Like us,” said Hikaru. “Or you,”

“He never does, though,” said Tamaki, eager to put her at ease, “He is the better man. Other than me, of course,” he said, absolutely serious. The twins, Hani and Mori threw small bones at him and booed. Tamaki retaliated by throwing the rabbit’s head at Hikaru, who dodged it. It crashed against the drone behind him, leaving a greasy mark on its shiny surface.

“Look what you made me do!” Tamaki stood up and walked to the raptor, and wiped the stain with his hand, managing to smear it even more.

“Tamaki, please, sit down and stop playing with our only asset,” said Ootori. “You are supposed to be charming Fujioka into joining our cause,” he offered her a round flask that they had been passing around. His tone was so polite, and his gesture so natural, that Haruhi took it and lifted it to her lips. It smelled like sake and litchis and something else, stronger and darker. She pretended to drink while Tamaki sat down next to her, and then passed it to Kaoru, who swallowed with joy.

“Was it tasty?” asked Hani, licking his fingers and his lips. They were wet and pink. “I prefer strawberry wine – but it’s too early in the year for that,”

“Hm,” said Haruhi, and Ootori’s lips quirked up. He knew that she had faked the sip. “It’s too strong,” she said, non-commitally.

“You’ve never drank before?” asked Hikaru. “If I lived in the city I would drink a barrel of vodka every single night,”

“That’s because you’re an alcoholic,” said Tamaki. “And shut up – you are going to scare her,” without warning, he took Haruhi’s hands between his and lifted them to his chest. He was very warm. Haruhi tensed immediately, and her jaw clenched, prepared to bite if he dipped in again, but he did not notice. “I do not scare you, do I, princess? I know that you cannot see me very well, but can you feel how sincerely my heart beats? Everything I say is honest – I swear,”

Haruhi slid back away from him, getting her hands back into her pockets and barely avoiding a crash onto Kaoru. Her hand closed around the mandarin orange. The twins snickered.

“Now you are laying it a bit thick, sugar daddy,” said Kyouya, taking his glasses off and carefully cleaning them with a bit of cloth. He had made a polite pile of bones on the floor.

“ _Mon Dieu_ , there’s no way to make you happy,” snapped Tamaki at the group. “Haruko,”

“Haruhi,” corrected Haruhi.

“Princess Haruhi,” Tamaki repeated. “We would like you to join us in our quest?”

“Just so you know, before you make an even bigger fool of yourself, she was awake the whole time she was on the floor,” said Kyouya, putting his glasses back on, “She knows about Kasanoda. You can skip that part,”

Haruhi stopped him before he could restart.

“Thanks a lot for the food – this is delicious – but I’m not going to join your idiotic quest,”

She heard laughing, but Tamaki’s face decomposed.

“Our quest – to bring freedom to Japan – is not stupid,”

“I’m not either,” said Haruhi, pointing at the two giant servers that she had believed to be the Authorities. “They fooled me at first, but now I can see that they are a crude copy of the real thing. They are impressive, and I have no idea of how you got them, but you are not going to be able to bring down a country or whatever your brilliant plan is just with two servers. It’s a miracle that you have not been found out, with all the noise that you make,”

Tamaki’s mouth opened and closed. He looked hurt in his pride, and his lips were set like the stubborn mouth of a five-year-old. None of the boys jumped to his defense.

“As for Kasanoda, he was hungry, I gave him food, and then he pushed me against a fridge and pointed an axed-sized knife at me, so I really don’t know where your trust bar is, but his is definitely much lower,”

Ootori coughed.

“What?”

“You forgot to mention the part where he cut all the turnips for you,”

The twins wolf-whistled and Haninozuka’s eyes widened as he pointed his finger at Haruhi. “I knew that you could not have done it alone!”

Haruhi’s fist tightened around the fruit. She held on to it, repeating the mantra that had been given as a gift by Matsuyama, her eyes set firmly on her shoes and the face of her father bright on her mind. “Whatever. You are delusional. Six orphans and two hand built servers against fifty thousand inlaws and the net-power of the Authorities – suicidal. That’s not something that I would want to try even if you had a thousand times more people,”

A blanket of silence fell over the group, and for a few minutes the only sound was that of chewing meat and breaking bones. Haruhi felt just a little bit bad to have dampened their good humor. She might have been unnecessarily harsh with their delusions. If they had lived for most of their lives in Ouran, without any expectations, it was almost normal that they hung on to the first beam of hope that they found. She was truly impressed with what they had accomplished, and more than a little scared of how every one of them could switch on the glow of menace - but that was not reason to join them in a pointless mission doomed to fail. She had to focus on her own goal.

She looked up to see that Haninozuka, Ootori and Kaoru were exchanging looks and spare hand signals over the heads of the other sulky three. They noticed her and stopped. Kaoru used his elbow to call his brother’s attention, who looked up at him, and a thought passed between the two of them. Hikaru read his brother’s face like a cracked cipher. His furrowed brow unwrinkled _,_ and his shoulders relaxed.

Haninozuka leant onto Morinozuka’s chest, splaying his legs along the taller boys and resting his head on his chest. He sucked his thumb for a moment, which disturbed Haruhi more than anything that had happened that day. Her cheeks reddened and she turned her eyes to her feet, where they stayed until Ootori spoke.

“A proof of power, then,” he said.

“What?” she asked, looking up. He was smiling at her, seemingly unguarded. She mistrusted him immediately. On the positive side, Haninozuka had stopped sucking his thumb. “What do you mean?”

“He means that we can show you we’re not fibbing,” said Kaoru.

“What’s your heart’s desire?” asked Haninozuka, with his ankles crossed.

“Yes, _princess_ , tell us your story – maybe there is something that we can do for you in exchange for your help,” Tamaki’s voice was speckled with bitterness, but he sounded more sincere than the other three combined.

“I’m not going to help you,” said Haruhi, very serious. “And he already knows everything,” she pointed at Ootori, who opened his hands and showed her his palms. They were snow-white, very different from twins and the third years, the hands of a skilled surgeon.

“Just snippets, just everything that goes on the record – but records are not reality. Tell us with your own words,”

“Please, Fuji-chan,” asked Haninozuka with an acidic sweet melodious tone. “We love stories,”

“You can start by once-upon-a-timing if it makes it easier,” suggested Kaoru.

“And we can make a doll with the rabbit’s rests so you can show us where your daddy touched you,” said Hikaru, arching an eyebrow.

Haruhi’s brain took a stunned second to process Hikaru’s words, but once it did her whole body sprang forward, leaping across Kaoru with killing intent. Her reliable, calmer, quieter, overseeing self melted in contact with the white-hot rage that powered her attack. She managed to slap the boy twice – once leaving a bright red mark across his ear and cheek, a second time sloppily on the arm, because he had jumped back – before two pairs of arms pulled her away. Hikaru was laughing like a maniac, even as he nursed his cheek.

“Ouch – looks like I struck a chord there. Do you have daddy issues? Kyouya told us that he stands accused of sucking dick. Did he teach you how?”

Haruhi leapt again, but this time she only managed to hurt herself. She didn’t need to look up to know that it was Mori who was restraining her. A string of insults that she had not even imagined until that moment cascaded from her mouth like poison darts, but they only seemed to tickle Hikaru’s funny bone.

“What a dirty mouth! I wonder where it’s been,”

“Shut up, now,” said his brother, pushing him lightly. “You are making things worse,”

“Worse than what? She thinks that we are retarded, and I think that she is a fake bitch with a stick up her ass. Might as well pull it out,”

“Enough,” said Tamaki. “One more word from that hellhole and I will kick you out,”

Hikaru shut up and paled. The red hand mark on his cheek shone brighter – she had managed to draw blood where her fingernails had scratched his skin.

“You can’t afford to kick _us_ out,” he said quietly, holding Kaoru’s hand. “Not for this,” he said, pointing at Haruhi. She still wanted to kill him – but she would have to wait until

“I’m not kicking out both of you. Kaoru will stay,” Tamaki looked at Kaoru, who held onto his twins hand tighter.

“What we cannot afford is _you_ creating dissent for the sake of it. We are trying to win her trust,” said Ootori, stepping beside Tamaki. He turned to Haruhi. “And for the record, I never told these two that you father was a prostitute, and certainly not that he was on the run for performing his job,”

“I deduced it myself,” said Hikaru. “It wasn’t difficult,”

“I said, shut up!” Tamaki held Hikaru’s shoulders and shook him so hard that the boy’s head snapped back. Tamaki released him, grimacing with disgust.

“You are full of bullshit,” snapped Hikaru.

“You are – I’ll deal with you later,”

He turned to Haruhi, who was still trapped by Mori’s arms. “I’m very sorry. And he will be, soon, please don’t take what he said to heart. He is messed up,” he said, pointing at his head.

“We are all a little crazy down here,” sing-sang Haninozuka.

Ootori pinched his nose. “We should get to work. And Fujioka should go back to her pod – her hour is up, and we have accomplished very little,”

Mori made a small angry sound.

“Except for the raptor. We should focus on that now. Kaoru, you had an appointment with Kozue Kitamikado tonight, didn’t you?”

“Yes,”

“Escort Fujioka to her pod on your way to it,”

“I’ll go with them,” said Hikaru.

“No. You will stay here and help us finish the clean up,”

“Kozue is expecting me too!”

“We’ll give her a _deep_ discount. Kaoru, be generous tonight to make up for Hikaru’s absence, we don’t want to lose a customer,”

He put Haruhi’s clenched fist into Kaoru’s hand. “Don’t let go of her until she is in the pod. She tends to flee. She should close her eyes once you are in the corridors, so make sure that she does not bump into things either,”

“Stop talking like I’m not even here,” said Haruhi, redirecting her rage at Ootori.

“But you are not here. You have never been here,” he said, threats hidden in word games, and delicately put her folded glasses into her chest pocket. “But if you decide to come back to Neverland, leave your heartstrings above ground,”

Tamaki did not come closer. He watched her from a distance, and mouthed a very regretful silent “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” that melded with the red lights and the dark shadows of the server room.

Kaoru was a gentle guide, and this time the stairs flew beneath their feet.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

“My father never-” started Haruhi, once they were up and she had to close her eyes again. They throbbed like twin hearts.

“I know. I mean, everybody knows – Hikaru was just shooting in the dark,” said Kaoru softly. “He was hurt because you didn’t take us seriously,”

“How could I? I don’t know you. I don’t know me now, not this person I’ve become – I’ve never hit anyone before,”

“Really?” Kaoru said, “That’s a pity – you had just one chance to enjoy your first slap ever and you wasted it on my brother, when Tamaki was sitting right next to you,”

Haruhi didn’t smile.

“You have to let go and adapt. Open your mind a little. Tell me your story,” he said, gently coaxing her tight fist to open with soft touches. She gave in, because she did not have any more energy to resist, and Kaoru lightly laced their hands together. He used his thumb to caress its back, from the wrist to the knuckles, with gentle and calming circles.

“My father was working –in the Red district, so that part is half-truth- and I was sleeping. The police came in and took me. They won’t tell me what he’s done, they don’t know where he is and then they put me here,”

“And your mom?”

Haruhi shook her head, and Kaoru seemed to understand immediately. His hand was very warm. “That sucks. What do you think he did?”

“I honestly have no idea. Maybe he went too far in his job – he is very enthusiastic. He took this picture with a famous chef a few hours before, so at first I thought that he was maybe accused of associating with undesirable citizens – but then they said that it was decree 84-2001 section P, and that does not make any sense,”

“Why?” asked Kaoru, truly curious.

“Because decree 84 is all about nanorobotics – which has as much to do with my dad as, I don’t know, fire batons,”

“You are right, that makes no sense. I mean, if they wanted to arrest him on association charges, with his job would be super easy. Why bring nanobots into the mix at all?”

Haruhi nodded. Her dad didn’t even have a high school diploma – the field of nanotechnology associated to him was absurd.

“He was – is- such a good dad. He works very hard, he always smiles – he loves to sing and gossip all the time. It drives me crazy; I could never study when he was home. But it was our home. They didn’t even let me go back for his things. Or my mom’s picture,”

“Can’t you access it online?”

“It’s not the same,” said Haruhi, “I don’t like the Authorities knowing that I’m looking at my dead mother. It shows attachment to the past, and it’s detrimental to a career in law, which is all about progress and adapting to fast change,” they turned a corner, “Once, it wouldn’t matter – but if did it too often, it would paint me as weak,”

“But why do you care anymore? It’s not like you are going to have a career now,” Kaoru said, but his tone was not cold like Ootori’s or acid like Hikaru’s or sarcastic like officer Kosaka’s. He was trying to comfort her, and Haruhi realized that he had partially succeeded – she did not have any reasons not to look at her mom online now – to hell with what her cumulated data would say about who she was. She was free to give in to that one desire, at least. She felt a tiny contracted muscle relax within her heart, and, grateful, she caressed Kaoru’s hand with her thumb.

“Maybe when I can actually see something,” she said, pointing at her eyes.

“Kyouya always knows what he is doing. I’m sure that tomorrow your eyes will be much better,”

“If they are, I should thank him,”

“Please don’t – he will make you pay for it if he thinks you owe him,” said Kaoru.

Haruhi smiled this time.

“You seem so well adjusted,”

“Thank you?”

“But do you truly believe what Tamaki says? That you six are going to start a revolution?”

Kaoru breathed before answering. His voice was kind and even.

“I believe that what he thinks he is doing will bring us a better future than we might have had before. I don’t know about big plans and revolution – Hikaru believes in that more than I do. But everything that we have done so far has improved something – opened up a world of possibilities,”

“I see,”

“No, you don’t yet – you’re still as blind as a bat,” he said, “But we are not alone – we have allies on the outside world. That’s what Kyouya meant by showing you what we can do. We could do one small thing for you,”

“Right,”

“You don’t have to believe me until you see it for yourself. Ask,”

“Come on – there is just one thing that I want, but it’s impossible,”

“Ask, and it shall be granted, as Tamaki would say,” said Kaoru. “Be careful, we are on the Dormitories. Where is your pod?”

“First row, between Soga’s and Kurakano’s,”

“Teacher’s pet,” he teased.

“Shut up – Ouran’s teachers are not even real,”

“What do you mean, “not real”? I programmed the History one myself. Don’t you like her?”

Before Haruhi could answer, or ask why did he get to program teachers, or if he could make them teach something useful at all, soft steps – softer than slippers, the person producing them must have been barefoot – came closer to them.

“This is why you are late?” asked an unmistakably feminine voice. “Who is this?”

“I am very, very sorry, Kozue. This is the new student, Haruhi Fujioka – nurse Okai asked me to take her back to her pod for the night.

“Holygrams, it looks like a rat munched on her eyes,” said the girl, unmistakably queasy. “Are you blind? There’s a kid on the High Risk section that has like, robotic eyes. Are you going to get those?”

Haruhi’s stomach turned a little. “No – they told me that I will be able to see tomorrow,”

But she had lost all interest in her and her natural eyesight. She heard a zipper being pulled down, the rustle of clothes, and Kaoru breathing in and out.

“And why were you at the nurse’s station?” purred Kazue. “And where is Hikaru? I reserved the both of you for tonight,”

“I’m very sorry, but Hikaru was feeling badly. He will spend the night in a clinical pod,”

“But you two never get sick,”

“Which is why we are not used to it – I’m sure it’s nothing, but you know how intensely he feels everything,”

“But I have waited so long – for weeks – to have both of you. And I paid in advance,” she protested.

“I will make it worth your patience,” said Kaoru.

A soft rustle, and the girl sighed sharply – almost a moan. Kaoru’s voice was lower now, mumbling sweet nothings, and his hand, still wrapped around Haruhi’s, relaxed and clenched as if it was out of his control. Haruhi felt intensely uncomfortable. Just as with the needle, she could imagine perfectly what they were doing, and she wanted nothing more than to get into her pod and disappear. But she didn’t know where her pod was. She reached to pull Kaoru’s sleeve, only to find that it was gone, and that in its place there was only soft skin, that bloomed in goosebumps at her touch. But she needed his help.

So she pinched him, not too hard.

“Could you wait for a moment, while I take Fujioka to her pod?” he said, breaking away from Kazue. “Then it will be just the two of us,”

Kazue produced a small protest, but nodded, and even added a semi-nice “Take care,” before Kaoru took Haruhi to her pod. He pressed her wristcell to a panel, and Haruhi heard the pod opening like a flower.

“So… have fun tonight, I guess,” she said, getting in, still with her eyes closed.

“Wait – Kyouya gave me these drops for your eyes. I should apply them before you pop off for the night,”

“Okay,”

He did so quickly. “I also have a little medicine,” he said.

Haruhi shook her head, but Kaoru’s thumb, calloused and delicate, was already pressed to her lips, covering them in fine powder that smelled like sugar. She licked them in reflex, and the warm glow filled her head immediately. The pain disappeared and the anger, the fear, the despair and the worries reshaped themselves as solvable problems – challenging but conquerable, like a mountain in spring. The beating of her heart became a hopeful drum, her breathing the wind of change.

“This too shall pass,” said Kaoru, kissing her softly with his lips closed, stealing back some cot for himself. “And when it does, do not judge us too harshly,” he pushed her gently into the pod, lifting her legs and laying them flat, and then pressed the button to close it for the night.

“Find my dad,” Haruhi said, because her fear was gone, and she did want him to hear her request.

“We will… do our best,” said Kaoru.

“That’s the only thing that I want. Find him, and make sure that he is safe, and I will do anything for you,” she repeated.

And then it was dark, and she could open her eyes, planning for the future until the effect of the cot wore off, and she fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

Haruhi had never experienced time distortion before.

In her other life, every hour had lasted precisely one hour – and the tasks that had to be completed within each hour, every day, were clear and took exactly their allotted time. At the end of each one there was progress.

Ouran’s time stretched like gum, creating neverending days looped with Sisyphean tasks. Pay attention to the holo’s subversive babble, and learn nothing new from it. Weed the fields – five new plants growing for every one you pull by the roots. Run and fall, skin your palms and try to do one more push-up under Morinozuka’s watch. Cut the vegetables without cutting your skin, pretending not to get Haninozuka’s double entendres. Loop and circle the school looking for the exit. Do not develop an obsessive compulsive disorder every time that Vice Principal Kazama calls three names for a surprise cavity search. Sleep, repeat.

She had seen Kyouya once, two days after her visit down below – to examine her eyes, which had become functional almost overnight, and to take the glasses back to nurse Okai, who would send them to officer Kosaka.

She had seen Tamaki twice, the first time surrounded by a flock of girls as aggressive in their flirting as he was in his speeches. The second time it was in the Dormitories, just with one. If Haruhi’d had any doubts about what Kaoru and Kazue had been up to, Tamaki illuminated them. He was carrying the girl in his arms like a bride and whispering with his mouth pressed to the intersection of her neck and her earlobe. Her skin turned pink wherever he kissed her. They disappeared inside a pod, and Haruhi disappeared back into the corridor.

Hikaru did not even look in her direction. She was grateful for that, because she still wanted to pop his eyes out with a spoon. Kaoru did, and although the lines animating his face were kinder than Hikaru’s, they only expressed acknowledgement.

Over the next weeks her eyes returned to being white and brown and black instead of red all over. She felt her body tightening and becoming more efficient, and her hands roughened with a million little cuts.

“You are so lucky,” said Momoka Kurakano one dawn, as they were pulling weeds. “Now you look almost normal. The freckles suit you,”

“Thank you. I miss my hair though,”

“Why did you cut it?”

“I didn’t – the police did,”

Momoka’s mouth produced a small indignant “oh”, and she used a very graphic word to describe what she thought about the police. Haruhi giggled. The sound, coming from her own mouth, was so strange that she startled, and kicked the sack of weeds in the process.

“What are you girls laughing about?” asked Kanan Mitsuyama, who was applying ladybugs to the budding stems to control plagues. She had braided her hair in a crown around her head to keep it off the way while she worked, and the baby hairs that escaped glowed like a halo under the early spring sun.

“Momoka’s toilet mouth,” said Haruhi. The sky darkened – two drones flew over their heads, shaking the barley. They were flying lower and lower every day, in circles, like a pair of hawks looking for their chick. Haruhi wondered if the boys had completely disabled the raptor’s tracker down below.

“Haruhi’s awful haircut,” said Momoka, retying her recycled hair band.

Mitsuyama nodded and encouraged a ladybug to take her place in the stem with a puff of air. “Good – good. Someone had to say something about it. I didn’t want it to be me, not with her handling knifes every evening,”

Haruhi put the weeds back into the sack, and then crouched to pull more plants out by their roots.

“It’s not the way it looks,” she explained, “It’s the way it feels. It gets into my eyes all the time, it’s too short to use elastics, it tickles, and it sticks to my face in PE – the only time it does not bother me is when I’m wearing the net in the kitchen, but I can hardly wear a net all day,”

“Sweetie, even a fishnet would look better than that,”

“Oh,”

“But it’s not in the rules, so you can’t do it. Tell you what – I’ll re-cut it for you,”

Haruhi looked up into the eyes of the older girl, and she could read mild jest and good intentions, and nothing more. The drones were turning around in the sky, encircling the fields. “When?”

“Before lights out tonight if you want – I’ll get some scissors from the hothouse,”

“Isn’t that forbidden?”

Mitsuyama rolled her eyes. “Of course. But I’m a delegate, and I’m supposed to take care of plants, so if a teacher stops me I can easily justify a pair of round scissors,”

“Could you do my hair too?” asked Momoka, touching her waist-length tips. “I always wanted to have bangs,”

“Your hair looks fine,” replied Mitsuyama. “But you can come and watch if you want,”

And that’s how Haruhi found herself navigating the hundred rows of pods of Dormitory 3 an hour before lights out. It was a strange change in her routine. She usually went to bed straight from dinner (or work, if she’d taken the late shift in the kitchens), and as she was in the first row she did not really see any of her classmates. It was always either too early or too late. She always dressed and undressed inside the pod, and that’s why she was surprised to see that most of the Ouran students hung out in different states of semi-nakedness at dark. With some exceptions, boys and girls tended to group separately, sitting on the open pods or the floor, using their pillows as couches, and dealing on

_cot_

sugar, sweets and fruit, magazines and rhythmic songs, powered by ten or twenty pairs of hands and feet. She passed some pods that were already closed for the night, and some where the other students were tackling and tickling each other, and she realized that for many of her classmates Ouran was the only home that they had ever had and the other inmates their only family.

She wondered if they feared the moment when they’d have to leave.

Kanan Mitsuyama was sitting in her pod in her underwear, painting her toenails bright orange and talking to a very tall and very sickly looking boy whose jacket was zipped up to his Adam’s apple. His hair was prematurely gray, and his cheeks and eyes were sunk with a green tinge. He said goodnight to Kanan as soon as Haruhi approached, and Kanan hung her painted feet over the pod and smiled at her.

“Come on, sit inside – I’m not going to put my pillow on the floor like those savages,” she pointed at a group of third-year boys that were sneaking glances at her. Her braids were down. She took out the tiniest pair of round scissors that Haruhi had ever seen and snipped them in the air.

“Ready? Take off your jacket and sit on it – I don’t want my pod covered in hair,”

Haruhi nodded and did as she was told. “Thank you very much for this. I just don’t want it getting on the way – so don’t waste time making it pretty,”

Kanan smiled again and smoothed the jacket under Haruhi’s crossed legs. “I can do both, don’t worry,”

“I brought the mandarin you gave me,” said Haruhi, pulling it out of her pocket. “We can share,”

“Aren’t you a doll? Do the honors,”

Mitsuyama examined Haruhi’s profile and asked her to turn her head a couple of times. She started by cutting the small strands that tickled her neck and ears, and progressed from there. Her mouth was set in a feminine curve, but her eyes were focused on the task.

She asked Haruhi about her life before Ouran, and Haruhi answered freely. Kanan asked her to put the mandarin sections in her mouth, because her hands were busy, and Haruhi obliged, feeling much better when her hair left her eyes and fell on her jacket.

“So rumor has it that you might be getting out soon,” said Kanan, combing Haruhi’s hair to the front to get a go at her crown. “Is it true?”

“I don’t think so. They haven’t found my father yet,”

“Sometimes, with ongoing investigations, officers come and go with students – as witness and whatnots,”

Haruhi did not doubt that officer Kosaka would come back, but it would surely be with bad news – or worse, with news that officer Kosaka considered good, such as that they had caught her dad.

“I don’t think that’s going to happen – why do you ask?”

“Well, if you do get out, even for a short visit to the city – or to the station- maybe you could do me a small favor,” said Kanan, trimming away. “Send a holocard to a friend?”

“What friend?”

“A childhood friend – he was my sweetheart,” said Kanan, following the curve of Haruhi’s ear with the scissors. “It’s difficult to stay in touch here – we can read some of the web but we cannot communicate. I would just like him to know that I’m fine – I have not seen him for almost ten years,”

“What’s his name?”

“Takeshi Kuze,”

“I’ve heard about him!” said Haruhi, looking up.

“Have you?” said Kanan, her eyes shocked. “It’s a very common name,” she added. A blush appeared around her ears and ran down her neck and shoulders.

“Yes, but is he your age? His face is kind of –sharpish? Long nose?”

“Yes,”

“He tweets – all the boys at my old school followed him, he gives tips on how to stay strong despite the rations, and he has a web channel with workout programs, and recipes – this guy I’m talking about is obsessed with citrus fruit and –” Haruhi noticed the discarded mandarin peel, and the shade of Kanan’s toenails.

“-oh,”

“Yes, it’s him,” said Kanan. “We lived in the same town, ten years ago,”

“Ah,”

“So will you do it?”

“Yes, but – if I send the holocard myself he will think that I’m just another fan. He might even discard it – he might not know it’s you,”

“I’ll tell you what to say,”

“And I’m not sure that I’m ever going to get out. You’re in your last year – you might be out before I am,”

“Maybe. Let’s cross our fingers,” Kanan, whose blush had vanished with Haruhi’s promise, produced a palm-sized round mirror with a black plastic frame. In its past life it had probably been attached to a vehicle. “I’m done. Look at yourself,”

Haruhi looked. Kanan had given her a short pixie cut with wispy limits above her ears and eyebrows. It did not get in the way.

“It’s perfect,” said Haruhi. “Thank you. You are very talented,”

Kanan punched her playfully in the arm. “You are welcome,” her hand brushed away some hair that had stuck to Haruhi’s skin, moving up to brush her neck and back, ending with her cheeks. She held her chin for a moment, pulling her closer as if to pick hair out of her face.

“You know – you are actually a pretty cute kid,” said Kanan, arranging a strand behind her ears. “It was hard to see it at first, with the eyes and the hair – but you could also pass as a decent boy, if you wanted,”

Kanan’s pupils were completely dilated, and Haruhi felt a strange emotion rushing towards her – she suddenly knew that she was going to be kissed by a girl, and she didn’t know how she felt about it. Her breath smelled like mandarins, and her lips were plump and looked very soft. And, most importantly, unlike Tamaki and Kaoru, Kanan seemed to be waiting for her to signal that it was fine, that she wanted that too. Haruhi felt like a rabbit facing a giant glowing carrot. She wanted very much to bite it, but she had never seen one before in her life. The mental image made her giggle, which made Kanan laugh, which broke the spell.

A polite cough, followed by a long shadow, interrupted their mirth. Haruhi looked up, to see that the group of boys from before were shamelessly staring at them, mesmerized, and that Kyouya Ootori was standing above them with a quizzical eyebrow.

“I hope that I’m not interrupting anything important,” said Kyouya. “But I must take Fujioka to her last ophthalmological exam,” he pointed at her wristcell, and Haruhi saw that the blue light was blinking as fast as an attacking Inlaw.

“How _responsible_ ,” said Kanan, nonplused. She locked the tiny scissors and the nail polish into a small compartment behind her pillow. Haruhi had never noticed that it was there, and she wondered if she also had one in her pod to keep small items, or if it was a delegate or a third year privilege. “Nurse Okai should put you up for promotion soon,”

“You will be the first to know if that happens. In the meanwhile, I must attend to my _fetching_ duties. Fujioka, let’s go,”

“Can’t I go see the nurse tomorrow?” said Haruhi. “I want to go to bed, and my eyes are fine now,”

“I can see that,” said Kyouya, with just a glint of mockery in his glasses, “but I have this feeling that you might want to get over it _tonight_ ,” Haruhi’s stomach turned at the force of the sheer hope that his emphasis conjured. She jumped out of the pod.

_Surely not? They were just boys, playing rebels. They couldn’t have –_

“See you, and thanks,” she said quickly to Kanan, being careful to take all the hair away in her folded jacket.

“Where are your slippers?” asked Kyouya.

“In my pod,”

“We’ll get them on our way _down_ ,” he said, and any doubts Haruhi’d had of what he was implying dissipated when she saw his half smile. Kyouya was so damn proud of himself that he was practically leaking smugness.

“Have you contacted my f-“

“We have been trying to contact you for almost twenty minutes,” he scolded, booming through the rows of pods and covering her voice, pride turning to warning. Haruhi shut up. Nobody should know, and in her impatience she had forgotten. The Dormitories, all three of them, were packed. “Do you think we are your servants, _princess_?”

“No, sir,” she said, playing the part and falling in step behind him.

“Because you are not in the city anymore – we have something called _discipline_ here,”

A handful of girls overheard them and laughed. One of them winked at Kyouya and shouted “I would let you spank me, Doctoori!”

The students lounging in the pods around them wolf-whistled.

“I’ve been a very bad girl too!” added her friend. “Come back tonight and show me the rules!”

Kyouya smiled back at them, but it was not his honest demonic grin.

“Keep dreaming,” he snarled under his breath, so heatedly that Haruhi put an armful of distance between them. “Get an appointment, and I will teach you anything you want,” he said instead. The girls cracked up, and one of them rolled over inside her open pod, exposing her belly as he passed by. Kyouya ignored her.

He didn’t stop for Haruhi to pull on her slippers either, just kept walking while she hopped behind, sliding them on. “Wait!” she asked.

“Hurry _up_ ,” he ordered. They encountered two instructors on patrol, and he slowed down enough for Haruhi to catch up and straighten, saluting them as they went by. As soon as they turned the corner, Kyouya broke into a run, grabbing her arm and pulling her into the rhythm set by his long legs. “We only have five more minutes of satellite, and you don’t want waste them,”

“The cameras,” gasped Haruhi.

“They turn off as we pass,”

“How?”

He flashed his wristcell – all the lights were flashing red. “With this,”

Now that she could see, Haruhi could memorize the way down. They went into a dusty pink sitting room with large furniture covered with white sheets. Kyouya pushed a semi-hidden door, and they stepped into a smaller room. There were empty shelves, but the floor was covered with broken china. He opened an ancient fridge that barely reached his waist, but it wasn’t a fridge – there were spiral metallic stairs leading below, alongside a metal pole.

Kyouya climbed to the rail of the stairs and got hold of the bar. Haruhi backed up against the closed door of the fake fridge.

“You can take the stairs – it will take you three minutes, if you are fast and don’t trip. Or you can use the pole, and be down with us in five seconds. Your choice,”

“I’ve never –”                                                                       

“Your choice,” he repeated coldly, loosening his grip and sliding down in a quick swoop. Haruhi’s wristcell was still blinking blue. She saw the top of his head disappear in the shadows. She could hear voices, but she couldn’t see the floor.

Five minutes of satellite, he’d said. Did that mean that she would be able to talk to her dad for five minutes? To see him? To get a chance at finding him on the web or leave a message? What?

Whatever that meant, she was not going to lose three of those five minutes taking the stairs.

Haruhi set her jaw and climbed on the handrail. The tips of her fingers barely grazed the pole, and she felt her balance faltering, so she jumped like a frog, hitting her face with the metal but managing to encircle it with her whole body. Her heart thumped when she fell around the bar rather than slide. She tightened her hands and thighs around it, and then there was too much friction, it burned, but at least she was slowing down. And then she fell into a pair of warm naked arms.

“You made it!” said Tamaki, twirling her in the air and smiling like a madman, “And what an elegant haircut! You look dashing,”

“Hikaru, pay up!” said Kaoru from above in the server. “I told you she would use the pole,”

“Yeah – well, Tamaki caught her, so it doesn’t count,”

“She didn’t know that!”

Haruhi scrambled to get out of Tamaki’s arms. She hit the ground running, following Kyouya’s shape until they reached the servers. The lower levels had been repurposed to fit consoles, and the boys had even placed handmade chairs next to them to work more comfortably. However, Kyouya was standing, typing with one hand and setting up an ancient webcam with the other.

“Hikaru, Kaoru, get in front of your consoles now!” he said, “I want our drones jamming every other connection in ten seconds,”

“Drones?” asked Haruhi. A few weeks ago they’d only crashed one.

“Contagion effect – explain later. Tamaki!”

“I’m ready,” said the blond, taking a martial stance in front of the camera. Kyouya pushed Haruhi in the chair, typed in a final password and went around the server, getting behind the twins with his tablet. Each of them was wearing a headset.

“Where are the “nozukas”?” asked Haruhi.

“On the fields, steering the drones, making this miracle possible,” said Tamaki, his spine getting even straighter. The console’s screen was completely black, with a small rectangle at the bottom. Concentric circles expanded within it, touching and stealing the color of wandering dots. When the last one turned grey, Hikaru announced, “Jamming complete,”

“Connecting with Sakhalin in three… two… one…” said Kyouya.

Tamaki put both hands on Haruhi’s shoulders and squeezed. She had no idea of what she was going to see –she hoped it was her father- but Tamaki’s hands were trembling just so. _That_ wasn’t very reassuring.

The red rectangle expanded and took over the screen, then faded to black. Haruhi looked up at Tamaki, who was looking at Kyouya.

“It didn’t work!”

“That’s impossible. We followed the procedure to the letter,” said Kyouya, checking his tablet and the twins’ screens. “Everything looks fine on our side,”

“But the screen is black and the timer is running,” complained Tamaki.

Kyouya put his tablet on Kaoru’s lap, and went over to check the wiring again, stretching over Haruhi’s head.

“What is wrong? Have we been found out? They are going to put us in isolation, I know it,” fretted Tamaki.

“Calm down, I’m 99% sure it’s just a lag –”

“Good evening, comrades,” said a voice with a very thick Russian accent.

Haruhi, Tamaki and Kyouya snapped their heads up. A hooded figure had appeared on the screen, so clearly that he could have been in the room with them. The hood came down to the top of its nose, covering most of its features, and it was using a voice distortion device – its tone was much lower than it was humanly possible.

“Shit,” muttered Kyouya, getting away from the camera.

“Do not bother – I got a clear shot of your face,” said the dark figure, smiling politely. “You might as well stay and join this chat,”

Kyouya answered off-camera, surveying the twins’ screens. Their eyes were scanning the screens, focused on their task, whatever it might be. “Not when we have such a good face for the revolution. May I introduce you to Richard Grantaine?”

“And I guess that the younger one is Haruhi Fujioka?”

“Yes,”

The figure tapped its screen with a long finger, swiping it without leaving any trace. “You did an excellent job on her eyes, if I might say so. The iris mask, seamless,”

Haruhi startled. They would not have dared to mess with her only form of identification. Would they? She had to remember to ask them about it later.

“Thank you,” said Kyouya. _They had, the bastards._ “Our link time is limited – maybe we should get to the point?”

“Ah, yes,” the hooded figure laid back and crossed his fingers. Haruhi knew that he was addressing her now. “You may call me Nekozawa. I hear that you have been looking for your father, yes?”

“Yes,”

“Tricky business, a law estate is. Many unexplained disappearances. Bad for civilization,”

Haruhi stared at the screen, her jaw getting more and more tense. She was starting to suspect foul play. As far as she knew, this Nekozawa guy could perfectly be Haninozuka or Morinozuka hiding behind a mouthpiece and a cape, transmitting from inside the school.

“We are very grateful that you offered to help this innocent girl to locate her own flesh and blood,” said Tamaki.

“Locate. Yes, I found a direct stream of where he is. But nothing is free, _da_?”

“Where is he?” asked Haruhi. “I don’t have anything to give you,”

Kaoru rolled his eyes and Hikaru made a slicing motion across his throat.

“Fantastic negotiating skills,” mumbled Kyouya.

The figure in black chuckled. He seemed highly amused by her faux pas.

“But you are rich in opportunity, Haruhi Fujioka. Soon to be out, I read here?” he tapped at the screen again, and an official police statement popped up. It was addressed to officer Kosaka – her fifteenth request to retrieve Haruhi for further interrogation had been accepted. She would be arriving to Ouran in two days, and she had forty-eight hours to get more information out of the missing suspect’s daughter.

“I didn’t know that,” said Haruhi.

“Your _friends_ did. I foresee some communication problems in your future,”

“Do you know where my father is or not? Show me,”

“What will you do in exchange?” asked the hooded figure.

“Anything,”

“I won’t ask for that much – this is but a cracking trifle. Consider it a demo of my skills,” he tapped his screen once more, and the image faded to show the feed of six security cameras. At first Haruhi had some problems to decipher what she was seeing – it looked like a hospital. There were people in white robes moving from one room to the other, and patients lying in open pods. But something was off. The Inlaws patrolling the corridors were armed – something that never happened in the hospital where Haruhi’s mom had died.

Haruhi scanned the screen as the feed changed from room to room. Nekozawa’s voice blasted through the speakers. “I ran his tweeter pictures through a facial recognition database – lucky that he liked to take so many selfies,”

Haruhi nodded. Her dad had always been his own biggest fan.

“Then I ran a search on the surveyance network using his facial parameters. Just as the police would do when looking for a suspect,”

So that was why Kyouya had not liked being caught on camera by this guy. Haruhi wondered why Tamaki (Richard?) did not have the same reservations. And why couldn’t Kosaka find her dad, if all Nekozawa had done was follow the same procedure as the police? She would have to run her own search on them once she was out, if they were right and she got out. She kept scanning the blinking feeds, looking for a familiar face.

The state of the patients was changing. At first they had been mostly active – watching holos, receiving visitors, reading their tablets, eating jell-o. As the stream progressed, they became noticeably different – no visitors, then no windows, then no hair on their heads, then not even doctors.

“Three minutes left,” signaled Kaoru. “Mori and Hani’s batteries are half out,”

“Why didn’t you use solar powered batteries?” asked Nekozawa.

“We did. It’s nighttime,” pointed out Kyouya. “Something that you would be experiencing right now if you were in Sakhalin,”

Nekozawa laughed darkly.

“Do you see him?” asked Tamaki, sticking his head next to Haruhi’s. “I can search too. Does he look like you?”

“A bit. He’s prettier,” said Haruhi. “At least when his face is done and –”

The new screens showed shaved patients that were completely restrained. A young man convulsed on his bed, startling the doctors that were observing him through a glass window.

“What’s this place?” mumbled Haruhi. Her stomach was sinking, and she felt very small, eleven years old, then five, then three. “Why are they tied up?”

“A R&D clinic,” said Nekozawa’s voice, deeper than a black hole “Thorough clinical essays. Very interesting experiments,”

“Two minutes,” warned Kaoru. Hikaru passed his headset to his brother, who rolled his chair to sit in the middle with one hand on each keyboard. Hikaru walked until he stood behind Kyouya, who had found the perfect angle to watch but not be seen. He crossed his arms and addressed the screen. “Is this place Hitachiin?”

“ _Nyet_ ,” said Nekozawa.

And then Haruhi saw him. Her mouth slacked, her shoulders dropped and she touched the screen as if she could take her father out of that cold window like a figurine out of a twisted doll house.

Her dad’s beautiful auburn hair was no more – they had shaved him so closely that his skull glistened, reflecting the glare of the white lights around his bed. He was only wearing white pants – not even a hospital robe- and every inch of his exposed skin was covered with sensors, which were transmitting to a small console above his head. His eyes were closed, his arms and legs were restrained from shoulder to ankle and his whole body shivered with every breath, as if the air itself hurt.

He was in a windowless room, and there were no doctors or nurses around him, not even observing – only two inlaws. One stood next to the door and the other rolled around the bed, round and silent and with his armed extremities half-extended.

“Dad –” gasped Haruhi. Her heart was breaking; her voice was smaller than a child’s. “Where is he? What happened to him? Why are there inlaws around his bed?”

Nekozawa shrugged in his tiny window at the bottom of the screen. On the main window, the armed Inlaw extended its arm and connected it to a sensor placed above her father’s heart. He must have sent an electrical current, because he convulsed, once. Haruhi stopped breathing.

“That’s fucked up,” commented Hikaru.

The feed stopped, and Haruhi shouted “NO!” at the screen before Nekozawa’s image took over again. She was barely aware of Tamaki’s hands still on her shoulders, trying to offer her a comfort that was too insignificant for the tidal wave of rage and impotence that was rolling inside her head. She slapped his hands away.

“I told you that these images were a gift,” said the hooded figure. “Not the information,”

“We can track them down,” said Hikaru, spitting on the floor. “Don’t blackmail us,”

“Please – you can barely jam your baby chicken drones,” said Nekozawa. “Don’t worry, I will tell you, I will, truly – you just have to fetch a small thing for me. It is auspicious, this request of yours – Ryouji Fujioka is at the same place that holds a very special item dear to my heart,”

“Anything,” said Tamaki, at the same time that Hikaru flipped two birds at the screen. The camera did not catch it. Kyouya was very still and very quiet, and the only sound came from Kaoru’s hands controlling the keyboard. Haruhi realized that her lips were pushed over her teeth, like a tiger’s and tried to contort them back to a normal expression.

“One minute,” said Kaoru, evenly.

“The details are uploading as we speak. Kyouya Ootori, yes?”

“Yes,” said Kyouya, still off-camera.

“Why don’t you read them and tell your leader Grantaine what you think? I believe that you will find them to be good for our mutual interests,”

Kyouya opened his tablet and read to himself, with Hikaru looking over his shoulder.

“This is shit,” said Hikaru, after scanning the page for one minute. His eyes were slits. “You want us to get killed,”

“ _Nyet_ ,” said Nekozawa, as if he was explaining basic mathematics to a child, “I want what it says there. I want the KRM prototype,”

“That is a Russian project,” said Kyouya, still reading. “It is not in Japan,”

“It was stolen. A fine job of industrial espionage. Kudos to your technocracy,” said Nekozawa, tapping his fingers. The blueprints of a golden heptagonal nanochip appeared on the screen, turning in front of his face. The chip grew and developed outwards in perfect geometrical pink spirals. His mouth looked sad. “I want it back,”

Kyouya closed his tablet. “As much as it pains me to agree with Hikaru, you are asking an impossible thing. We need to tackle smaller projects first, with outcomes that will not end with us in the death row for high treason,”

Tamaki took the tablet and opened it. His violet eyes speed-read the information.

“I’ll do it,” said Haruhi. She didn’t know how. She stood up, looking directly into the camera. “I don’t know what it is, but if that chip is in the same place as my father, I will get it for you. Just tell me where that is,”

Nekozawa shook his head. “No, no, girl – you would fail on your own. Get killed, and then they move the chip, and then I have to find it again. Not very good, as a proposal. You –we- need your friends,”

Haruhi wanted to scream that these boys were not her friends.

 _Then you’d better start cozying up to them, honey,_ said her father’s voice. _Because I feel my time is running out._

“Please,” said Haruhi, to the screen, and then to Hikaru and Kyouya, Kaoru and Tamaki.

“We will do it,” said Tamaki, standing up and taking Haruhi’s place. “We will be honored to help a fellow rebel and assist a damsel in distress to the end of the w-”

“No,” repeated Kyouya, “We are minors in an orphanage, with no access to weaponry or camouflage. As Nekozawa said, we can’t even properly jam the Authorities’ signal, not for a long time. We cannot infiltrate a heavily armed clinic,”

“What about all your revolutionary crap? What was that? You are good enough to talk about freedom and sticking it to the man and liberating the world from the yield of the Authorities and all that nonsense? This could be your training,” said Haruhi, pointing at the screen, “I know that you wanted me to get something in Tokyo, I will get that for you too,”

“No,” said Kyouya, “I’m truly sorry about your father, but this was never part of any deal. We would get nothing for helping you two except death or prison, if we are lucky. We have no incentives,”

Nekozawa squirmed, then. “I have incentives for you,” he said.

“Thirty seconds,” signaled Kaoru, raising a hand. Hikaru grudgingly moved from his position behind Kyouya and sat back down at his console, unhooking the earpiece from Kaoru’s ear and setting it back over his own. They spoke in unison. “Get back to the club,”

Haruhi’s senses were working overtime, and she heard two muted “Roger that,” from their speakers.

“If you get me the KRM prototype, I will give you my satellite,” said Nekozawa. She also heard a tinge of desperation in his tone that was not completely masked by the voice distortion.

Kaoru stopped typing, and Hikaru looked up sharply. Tamaki startled as if he had been bitten by a snake. Kyouya pushed his glasses up.

“What satellite?”

“My Sakhalin base, and its linked satellite. I will not need it anymore if I get the KRM back. You could use it for your revolution, yes?” he said.

The boys were stunned into silence. “That is a very extravagant offer,” started Kyouya, once he recovered from the shock, “But-”

“Yes,” said Tamaki. “Yes – we will do everything in our power to retrieve your item. You have my word,”

“Ten seconds”

“Do I have theirs?” asked Nekozawa.

Haruhi and Tamaki looked at the twins, who were updating Mori and Hani on the proposal as fast as their lips could move. Both of them put one thumb up, then both of them. Tamaki turned to Kyouya, imploring. “Please,” he asked. Kyouya shook his head.

“It’s too soon,”

“It’s the best opportunity that we will ever have,” insisted Tamaki. “A satellite – some countries don’t even have that,”

“It’s not very big,” clarified Nekozawa, gesticulating with modesty, “But it works,”

“We will die,” stated Kyouya, matter-of-factly. “We are untrained and currently trapped in here,”

“We will live and change the world,” Tamaki walked up to Kyouya and put his hands on his shoulders, on his neck, on his cheeks. Kyouya stood very still, his lips and his eyebrows severe ink strokes. Tamaki’s voice was rich with faith, and his face a moving aquarelle. “Just like we promised,”

“I can assist you with material, as long as it can be dropped-off,” said Nekozawa, enticing, “Not vehicles or drones, that’s too big – but smaller things. Useful things for crawling in the dark and taking out your enemies,”

Haruhi shivered. She was not going to kill anyone.

_Never say never._

But that seemed to do the trick for Kyouya.

“Yes. We accept your offer,” he said, without taking his eyes off Tamaki’s.

“Yes!” shouted Tamaki, jumping and forcing Kyouya to jump with him. He kissed him in both cheeks. “Yes! Mon ami! YES!”

“Three seconds!” warned Kaoru.

“Get a room!” barked Hikaru.

The metal door opened with a bang, and Hani and Mori landed on all fours. Mori jumped to close the door again with a powerful hit of his hand. They took off their earpieces and two technical backpacks that were barely blinking – the batteries to their handheld controls, and took in the scene before them.

“What are you doing?” said Mori. He looked angry, and he came towards the server with great strides. “Turn off the link!”

“The drones will zero in on us if you don’t!” said Hani, equally annoyed.

“We will be in contact soon,” said Nekozawa, before tapping on his screen for a final time. “ _Dobroj noči_!”

Kaoru pushed a gray switch. “We are off the air,” he tore the earpiece off his face. “What the hell just happened?” he asked Tamaki, who was still jumping with childlike joy, and then to Kyouya and Haruhi, who were emitting two very different kinds of silence.

Time slowed down and stretched. Haruhi touched the screen, black and cold under her fingertips. She saw Tamaki coming in for another spontaneous hug from a mile, and ducked, and evaded, locking eyes with Kyouya. He was furious, and already planning, and in his eyes she saw an accusation and a demand. She turned her face away, refusing to take the blame.

 _You brought this on yourself,_ she thought, _you pulled me in by the ankles._

_And thanks to that I might save dad. Thanks to them._

_Or we might all die – daddy, them and me._

Hikaru had turned off his console and was howling like a maniac facing an army, shaking his fist in the air. After a second, Kaoru joined in his deranged joy.

Time was turning in gold and blue and pink spirals – Kyouya had put the nanochip on every screen, and it danced with them.

Mori and Hani exchanged a look. They were dirty, and the cloth of their jackets and trousers was alive with insects and leaves. Haruhi saw that the knees of their pants were caked with dirt. They had been outside for a long time. She wanted to go outside. The cool night air would clear her head. But now it was too late even for that.

_We are all mad in here._

A tiny sugar-sweet smile spread on Hani’s face like melted caramel “Did he just say that he’s sending weapons?” he turned to Mori. “I did not imagine it, did I?”

“No, you didn’t,”

“Well,” said the smallest hacker, taking a crumbling gingerbread man out of his pocket and chewing off its head. “I've always wanted to go on a heist.”

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies for the delay for this post. The good news is that the next one will be up pretty soon - as most of the material is already written, and just needs more editing.   
> Many thanks to the wonderful reddit thread "roses are red / violets are blue" - I stole shamelessly from them to write the final part of this chapter. Couldn't have done it without 'em.

 

“You did _what_ to my eyes?!” asked Haruhi as soon as the kerfuffle died down.

 

To his credit, Kyouya did not even flinch, and even pushed a suddenly very protective Tamaki aside to face her directly.

 

“I anticipated your need for wider range of movement while you were in Tokyo,” he said.

 

To celebrate their _incredible chance -_ never mind Haruhi’s distress _-_ Mori had produced a box filled with hand-rolled onigiri, and the ever-present flasks of water and moonshine. Kyouya sipped the last one, coolly detached from the gross violation that he had just admitted.

 

“You gave me a new iris print!”

 

Iris prints were scanned for everything -from handcells to state examinations to greeting buyers in shopping malls. It was the most reliable way to confirm a person’s identity quickly. It was unique. Tampering with it was extremely punishable.

 

“Yes,”

 

“That’s - wildly illegal!” by which she meant, _I’m a walking crime._

 

Kyouya shrugged. “So is cot, unregulated whoring, satellite links with hostile nations, stealing industrial secrets, breaking into private clinics with murderous intent and conspiring to overthrow the government,”

 

“And breaking curfew,” added Hani, passing around the onigiri plastic container.

 

“Hunting and gathering,” offered Mori, gobbing his onigiri in one munch.

 

“Taking apart devices to repurpose their components,” said Kaoru, pointing at the servers.

 

“That is true, Haruhi,” said Tamaki, conciliatory and passing her the moonshine bottle. “Almost everything that we do is against the law. And what little is not today might be tomorrow, for the express purpose of putting innocents in jail and maintaining the _machina quo_ ,”

 

Haruhi had spent a lifetime watching politicians on the holo and learning their tricks by heart. Tamaki was trying to divert her attention by pushing his agenda. She frowned at him and pushed back the hand that held the moonshine.

 

“Yes, but at least you are jumping into all those things with our eyes wide open!”

 

“And now you have a brand new identity to go with those eyes,” replied Kyouya, breaking his onigiri in two and offering half of it to her.

 

Haruhi eyed the rice suspiciously, but she was really hungry. Rations were not cutting it - probably because she kept leaving half to Kasanoda. She smelled the rice it before biting into it, just in case it had been spiked. It just smelled like rice and something sweet. Kyouya smirked.

 

“So what you injected that night was not a serum to accelerate the healing process,” she said, chewing. The onigiri was filled with sweet potato mash.

 

He looked slightly insulted. “Of course I did. Sliding the mask behind the cornea is a very risky operation - without proper healing, it would have flapped,” he illustrated his words using the onigiri as the eyeball and his hand as the flapping cornea. Haruhi swallowed hard. The rice caught in her throat and she coughed. Tamaki passed her the water flask.

 

“And that’s a problem because it would have hurt a lot,” said Haruhi, after drinking, “And now I could be medically blind,”

 

“I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to apply a second one,” said Kyouya. “No good excuse for it. Your eyes were messed up enough to operate on them when you came in. And after I saw the… potential with Kasanoda, and officer Kosaka’s insistence -“

 

“Couldn’t you have asked?!”

 

“Would you have said yes?” asked Hani. He was sucking the sweet potato and passing the rice to Mori. The taller boy did not seem to mind.

 

“…no,” said Haruhi, finishing her half onigiri and licking her fingers. “Of course not. That’s the whole point!”

 

“I don’t get why you’re angry,” said Hikaru. “It’s not like you had a big future waiting outside with your name attached to it,”

 

“Not as this country is right now,” said Tamaki, pressing his point.

 

“Besides, as long as you are wearing the wristcell - and you have to, even when you are outside- you’re not going to be scanned. Commercial scanners do not care if they sense that you have no money to spend, and you will be in officer Kosaka’s custody all the time. She will be the one getting checked, which is perfect,”

 

Haruhi took Kyouya’s antiseptic bottle and washed her hands. “Why?”

 

Hani laughed, and the twins smiled like they had eaten a canary. Tamaki grit his teeth and took a deep breath, bracing for impact. Kyouya retrieved his antiseptic bottle, and methodically washed his hands.

 

“And if you do, she will think that the scanner’s malfunctioning,” said Kyouya.

 

“Why?” repeated Haruhi, horrified suspicion sprouting in her mind.

 

 

 

_I know exactly where they are sending you_

 

 

“Did Matsuyama share any more fruit with you?” asked Kyouya instead, and the insinuation in his voice was subtle enough to go over Tamaki’s head but to call - _distract_ \- the twins’ attention. “I could have an orange,”

 

_and it’s where I come from_

 

 

“No. Why will officer Kosaka think that the scanner is broken?”

 

“I just don’t know how she manages to get citrus all year round - she really has a green thumb,”

 

“Stop talking about Kanan. Answer my question,”

 

_so I’m going to be able to give you some pointers_

“For heaven's sake,” said Haruhi, “You bastard,”

 

“I have access to a limited iris database,” said Kyouya, shrugging, “I had to chose the iris print of someone who'd been in Ouran,”

 

“It’s delightfully ironic, if you really think about it,” said Tamaki, standing up next to Haruhi and striking a tragic pose, “If she had not blinded you, you would not be wearing her eyes,”

 

“They are still my own!”

 

“And lovely as ever, princess,” said Tamaki, almost serenading her.

 

_How would you know_

“I swear that if any of you call me princess one more time I will tear _your_ eyes out.”

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

“We have a cunning plan!” said Tamaki the next night, using his index to punctuate his words.

 

Haruhi did not bother pretending to believe him. It was his third cunning plan in less than twenty four hours. The first had involved Haruhi distracting the guards at the clinic with her womanly wiles (this had made the twins howl with laughter) while Hani and Mori kicked the scrap out of the inlaws. The second plan consisted in kidnapping the incoming prime minister, and using that leverage to demand the liberation of Haruhi's dad and the KRM chip. Haruhi had pointed out that they had no definitive proof that any politician had anything to do with both missing chip and father. Tamaki had crumbled in a corner of woe, but not for long.

 

“This plan is perfect! We were going to start it when Hani and Mori got out, but drastic circumstances call for rushed development!”

 

“What plan?” she said, capitulating. She had been trying to dust her Law Coding skills with a 10 year old _Codex Computatralia_ , which she'd found curling in one forgotten hard disc. It was an old download, and it did not contain the most recent decrees and amendments, but it calmed her nerves to go through the logarithms and iterations of the law.

 

“We are going to ask the Zuka to join us in our fight,” he said, with the same reverence that her dad used to admire celebrity weddings.

 

Haruhi could not believe her ears. She put down the grey-scale tablet. Her voice came out weirdly deadpan.

 

“That’s a terrorist organization,”

 

“They are freedom of expression fighters!” exclaimed Tamaki. “Born after the great censorship decree three years ago!”

 

“They blow things up to express their freedom,”

 

“They are _la Résistance_!”

 

“I don’t know what that is and I don’t care. Do you know how many times they’ve put the whole city on lockdown?” twelve times in three years that Haruhi could remember. The last one had been during New Years Eve three months ago.

 

“But they’ve never killed anyone, have they?” pointed out Kaoru.

 

“And they’ve never been caught,” smirked Hikaru.

 

_Eyes on the prize, sweetheart._

 

Haruhi rubbed her brow and aimed for practicality, as ethics were clearly not getting to them.

 

“Regardless of my opinion, what makes you think that they will want to join you? They are -good grief - professionals,” _and you are not._

 

“Us. Join us,” corrected Hikaru.

 

Kyouya passed her the tablet. “ _They_ made us think that. A month ago we managed to send out encrypted messages, left in layered onion forums - they answered that we should meet in person first,”

 

Haruhi read through the crypto. He was telling the truth. The Zuka (who were communicating through the photo forum of the very innocent and prestigious Lobelia academy, a bastion of the sanctioned arts) seemed pleasant enough for people who liked to play with plastic explosives. They were using the Astronomy forum to leave messages embedded in night-sky pictures. They would be happy to accept them in their group, but not without meeting them first, she read in a detailed photograph of Orion.

 

“Hm,” said Haruhi, “I still don’t get why we need them. Can’t we work with whatever Nekozawa drops?”

 

“The problem is retrieving the drop - it can’t fall within Ouran’s grounds, because somebody could notice. The closest and safest point is here,” Mori brought up a map and signaled a spot on the coast, which was ten kilometers away, while Kyouya droned on,

 

“And to get that we will have to leave the school and move there, undercover. If we succeed we will have to learn to use the weapons and camouflage material, and then prepare a plan to storm the clinic. We could theoretically do all of that on our own, if we had more time,” he cocked his head, “Do you want to take things slowly?”

 

Haruhi thought about her father’s mysterious convulsions. She could not afford to take her time. She suspected that the plan was already being delayed by Kyouya, who did not want to rush into an ambush without being 100% that he was going to be the one doing the ambushing.

 

“No. Of course not,”

 

“So your job in Tokyo will be to get in contact with the Zuka, and to convince them that it’s in their best interest - our common ideals - to lend us a hand,” said Tamaki. “They know that you are coming. We left a message,” he tapped on a picture of Andromeda and it dissolved in code, “They will get in touch with you,”

 

“How? I’m going to be in Kosaka’s custody the whole time,”

 

“Do not worry, prince-” Tamaki caught her death stare and stammered, “- comrade, we have a fool-proof plan,”

 

“You just have to get into Kyouya’s mad surgeon hands one more time,” said Kaoru, pulling his hand out of his pocket and showing her a tiny metallic device.

 

“What’s that?”

 

“A very ingenious invention from the era before the internet - it’s called a short wave radio, and this one has been adapted to fit into a tooth,” said Tamaki, beaming, “Isn’t science marvelous? A machine straight out of an old-fashioned spy movie!”

 

Somehow, Hikaru and Kaoru had brought down a moth-eaten velvet recliner, and they were covering it with relatively clean plastic sheets. Kyouya and Mori had moved, and were straining a pot of boiling water. There were pliers and pincers and other inauspicious instruments floating inside. Haruhi gulped, and took a step back.

 

Hani reached out with a heart-shaped lollipop. “For the pain. Lick it slowly, and it’ll make your mouth all tingly and then numb,”

 

“I don’t think that this is the best solution,” she said, very slowly, eyeing the lollipop like a sword.

 

“ _Au contraire_ \- it’s perfect,” Tamaki took out a tin box, filled to the brim with rough cottonballs. He selected a medium-sized one, and grinded it on his palm using the lid.

 

 _Anesthesia_ , Haruhi realized, walking back. _Well, at least they’ve thought of that._

“Nobody transmits in short-wave because it's so incredibly low-tech. On the plus side, the transmission will be completely unmonitored by the Authorities. You will be able to hear the Zuka, and hear us. We’ll be literally inside your head the whole way AND you will not be compromised, because you will not be able to transmit back! You don’t have to worry about anything,” he seemed too enthusiastic for someone who had just uttered three completely contradictory statements.

 

If Tamaki was a program, he would have crashed ten minutes ago.

 

Haruhi backpedalled again, feeling for the handrails. Her foot connected with a dented wheel, and the two dark-haired boys looked up at her - Mori solemn and firm, with his stern “ten more push-ups” expression. Kyouya’s eyes were more distant. His mind was clearly pacing through checklists. Haruhi could only hope that they were medical.

 

“I don’t wanna,” said Haruhi, whose teeth were pristine and had never suffered as much as one cavity. She had never been afraid of going to the dentist, though - she was terrified of _these_ dentists. “There has to be some other way,”

 

“Resistance is futile,” noted Tamaki with infinite kindness, striding forward and holding her chin. Kaoru was dabbing antiseptic on the receptor and Hikaru was adjusting a repeater with a foldable screwdriver. He smiled mischievously at her and winked an eye.

 

“And I promise you, this will not hurt,” added the blond, puffing air into his palm and dusting cot all over Haruhi’s face.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

Two hours later, Haruhi touched her new radio-filled molar with the tip of her tongue, probing for pain, but Tamaki’s promise had become real once more - it did not hurt, although the gums around the implant were swollen and tender. It felt very strange to know that she had a tiny machine lodged in her jaw, and even stranger to anticipate the moment where sound would start to run from her tooth to her eardrum.

 

They had run a couple of tests in the server room after the procedure, with Haruhi standing alone on one wall and the boys talking through their headsets from the other. She had no way of talking back to them, or of tuning them off once they started babbling, and that was the part that she liked the least.

 

“It’s a design fault,” admitted Kyouya, “Plus, once you are outside Ouran’s broadcast area, the radio will be silent until you enter Zuka’s,”

 

“How can I tell you if something is not going according to plan?” asked Haruhi. “Or if I need to improvise,”

 

“You can’t,” said Mori. Haruhi’s eyebrow twitched involuntarily.

 

“How am I supposed to get out of Kosaka’s sight?”

 

“Use your natural ingenuity?” suggested Tamaki.

 

“My guess,” said Kyouya, fiddling with his glasses, “Is that she will want to put you at ease to advance her investigation. Use her eagerness to make nice to get her guard down.”

 

“She wasn’t very nice before,” said Haruhi, remembering officer Kosaka’s cynical comments and how rough her last night in her old life had been.

 

“I think there’s more to her than meets the eye. She seems awfully involved in this investigation. Fifteen requests to get you out means that fourteen of them were denied before this one was green-lighted,”

 

“Well, it’s her job to find people,”

 

“No, it’s her job to follow the Authorities’ directives. She couldn’t find the security footage of your father in her system - while a Russian hacker could. What does that tell you?”

 

_That the videos were blocked from within the system._

“Not to mention that it’s election time. The whole police force should be focused on keeping the peace during the rallies, not in pursuing red district runaway fathers,”

 

“Here,” said Hikaru, dangling a pinky-sized plastic bag in front of her nose, like he was playing with a cat. “If everything else fails, use this,”

 

Haruhi snatched it off the air. It was filled with red dust. She remembered the lollipop. Well, she was already impersonating an officer - her sentence couldn’t get much harsher if she drugged said officer. But…

 

“How do you suggest I get this out of the school?”

 

“Do you want me to draw you a picture?” asked Kaoru, walking two fingers down her spine.

 

“Or we could help you with the hiding,” said Hikaru, smiling with too many teeth, “After we look at all the possibilities,” he slung an arm around her shoulders, getting hold of the front zipper and sliding it down just a little.

 

Haruhi pushed their hands away. Hani giggled. Kyouya rolled his eyes and turned his back on them. Mori, who was fixing a lose panel, hit the metal with his hammer menacingly. Tamaki looked outraged.

 

“Perverts! Leave your sister-in-arms alone! You will not put your filthy hands anywhere near her -”

 

“Her what, oh, Leader?” asked Kaoru, turning with a twinkle in his eyes.

 

“Yes - tell us, which nook were you _specifically_ thinking about?”

 

Tamaki looked so furious and uncomfortable that his _cheeks_ got goosebumps. “I… None! I order you to shut up and -”

 

“No cavity searches when going out,” said Mori.

 

Tamaki calmed down immediately. He shot a triumphant look at the twins.

 

“Killjoy,” mumbled Hikaru.

 

It made sense. There was technically nothing worth stealing in Ouran - at least nothing that could be carried within one’s body. Haruhi felt some relief at not having to tinker with herself anymore for the mission, and then a deep annoyance that they were in the mood to tease her when they should be going over the details of the plan.

 

"I think that's all for today," said Kyouya. "It's not as if we have a very detailed plan to go through. We will have to trust Haruhi to use her brains to win this one,"

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

The next morning, Haruhi's pod opened on its own as a quiet synthetic voice commanded her to go to the nurse station for a checkout examination.

 

Officer Kosaka’s frown was carved deeper than Haruhi remembered. This time she wasn’t accompanied by an Inlaw - _small relief_ \- but by a trembling trainee.

 

“This is Arai Shindou,” said Kosaka. “He’s - new,” she said, clearly meaning _useless._

Shindou was drowning inside his oversized police coat. He timidly nodded at Haruhi, who was standing in the scale in her camisole and underpants, receiving the medical check (only weight and general state of health, because she’d been _such a good girl_ ) before entering Kosaka’s custody for the weekend. Shindou’s cheeks reddened and he turned his face away. From the corner of her eye, Haruhi noticed Kyouya’s mouth twitch in amusement.

 

"We are going out," said Kosaka, arms crossed, throwing a disdainful look at the back of nurse Okai's head. Haruhi was starting to suspect that the unsupervised power that Kyouya held over the medical tasks was more due to the sheer laziness of nurse Okai than his own sneakiness. Nurse Okai was confirming that impression - she looked like she could barely contain herself from snapping at officer Kosaka for waking her up so early, and she looked even more disheveled than poor Arai Shindou.

 

Haruhi forced herself to seem hopeful. "Have you found my dad?"

 

Kosaka shook her head. "I was hoping that we could go over his last movements again - maybe you will see something that we missed. Ouran has not transmitted any reports about you, which usually means that you have been a stellar kid,"

Haruhi had to work less hard to look disappointed.

 

“All normal,” reported Kyouya to nurse Okai.

 

“And these,” said Kosaka, easing her frown a little and passing her a bundle, “Are for you,”

 

Haruhi’s fingers recognized the texture before her eyes did. She couldn’t help but smile warmly at the older woman.

 

“My old clothes!” she said, delighted, burying her face in cotton, linen, denim. They still smelled like home. “I thought they were gone,”

 

“I pulled some strings - though that you might want to wear something _softer_ for the weekend. I would have killed for anything other than those potato sacks when I was in here,”

 

Officer Kosaka turned to nurse Okai. “Do you mind if she changes here before we go out?”

 

Nurse Okai waved her agreement and went back to laying her head on her hand and staring at her console. Haruhi stepped behind a folding screen that had been put up exclusively for officer Kosaka’s benefit, although poor Shindou looked like he needed it the most.

 

“Fujioka had a cavity last week in her upper right second molar,” reported nurse Okai to Kosaka. “She’s taking antibiotics, and she shouldn’t eat sweets."

 

The antibiotics (and the anti-inflammatories) had been dealt much more liberally than nurse Okai suspected to prevent any infections that could attract even the slightest attention to Haruhi's mouth.

 

She saw that someone had already brought her work boots and a pair of thick socks to wear outside. She started to get ready by folding her Ouran uniform and pressing her palm to the soft-as-home clothes - and because she had already been desensitized in the Dormitories, she didn’t really register when Kyouya stepped behind the screen with and made a brusque "o" gesture with his mouth. Haruhi sighed, complying for a last dental check, and opened her mouth like an alligator.

 

“Perfect,” he whispered, looking inside to assess his own work one last time. He looked into her eyes, re-checking the iris mask, turning her face under the sunlight to make sure that it did not produce strange reflections that might give it out. There was _that_ smugness again.

 

Haruhi shook her face from his hands. “I have to get dressed,” she whispered, pushing him back.

 

“I have to stay and make sure that you are _only_ putting on clothes, as per procedure,” he said a little louder, for the sake of officer Kosaka and nurse Okai.

 

“Thank you, Ootori,” said nurse Okai’s weary voice. “And hurry up. You have lab shift in fifteen minutes.”

 

Kyouya ran his hands through her garments - well worn blue-jeans, a light pink tunic cut like a tulip and an oversized white sweater.

 

“Very -” he said, turning the cuffs of the jeans, throwing them back to her and running his index on the inseams of the tunic, “- feminine. I didn’t know you had it in you,”

 

“Are they clear?” asked Haruhi, putting on the clothes as he finished checking them for trackers. He paused at the sweater and frowned. He’d found something.

 

Haruhi loved that sweater. It was softer than a cloud, and warmer than duvet. She had practically lived in it every winter since her dad found at the bottom of a sales pile. It’d had a hole in an elbow that Haruhi had patched from the inside with a small iron-on poppy.

 

“It’s a home repair,” said Haruhi, tugging at the fleece lining, trying to save it from closer inspection. “I sewed it myself three years ago,”

 

Kyouya ripped the poppy nonetheless, and inspected it, just to make sure it was not laced with a bug. _Bastard._

 

“Crystal,” he said, dropping the poppy patch in his chest pocket, where it disappeared like a drop of blood.

 

Well, at least if he kept it she might be able to get it back once she was back at the school.

 

Then he set his hand along her profile, thumb on her chin and index over the juncture of jaw and ear.

 

“The group has taken a liking to you,” he said, feeling for the small swelling under her earlobe, “They think that you bring luck,”

 

“And you?” asked Haruhi, narrowing her eyes ever so slightly.

 

“ _I_ hope that you prove them right,” Kyouya slipped his hand under her gloriously fluffy sleeve and brought her closer. For a very confusing second Haruhi thought that he was going to kiss her, or hug her, or sniff her, or do something equally ridiculous, but he merely slid a thin supple package under her wristcell, sticking it between her skin and the plastic band. The closeness, she realized, was also for the sake of the adults - if they were watching, their silhouettes would suggest young lovers saying goodbye instead of illegal subterfuge.

 

“In case you need to knock out Kosaka,” he said, whispering in her hair and using two fingers to smooth and flatten the package against the skin. “Better here than where the twins suggested,”

 

Then he applied pressure to her jaw juncture, activating the radio. She heard the crackling of empty air, and then the sudden distance between their bodies and the bittersweet rush of relative, temporary freedom.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

“Sit on the back,” said officer Kosaka, taking the wheel. Arai Shindou sat shotgun. He still looked impossibly shy and way too young to be a real policeman. His hair was light brown and he even had a couple of pimples.

 

“How old are you, exactly?” asked Haruhi, unable to resist.

 

“I’m 16,” he mumbled, neon-red. He looked 14, at most. “It’s job week at school - short internship. Do you - eh...- have that here?” he stammered.

 

Kosaka looked at Haruhi through the mirror with incredulity, almost excusing herself. “Shindou, in Ouran _every_ day is work day. Be more considerate!” she barked.

 

“Sorry,” he said in a very small voice, staring at his knees. Haruhi tried to smile at him to put him at ease, but he did not lift his eyes from that spot for the rest of the ride.

 

“So we are going to drop by headquarters first, and I’m going to go with you over your father’s last movements before his disappearance,”

 

_His last movements - convulsions. Shaking. Spasmodic breathing. Electrocution, probably._

 

Haruhi nodded. “Of course - I will help you in any way I can,”

 

Kosaka looked at her again, frown deepening. “Good. Tomorrow, if we are done, I will help you set up a savings account to automatically transfer your Ouran wages. I wish somebody’d done it for me. Is there something that you would like to eat today? I'm partial to fish - but I can let you pick, this one time,”

 

Haruhi nodded again, absent-mindedly. She really didn't care. The sun was rising behind slate clouds. It looked like it was going to rain a lot, and other than the work boots, she had not prepared for rain at all. Not very practical, if she had to roam the city looking for the Zuka.

 

The police car was a newer solar model and it rolled soundlessly -but relatively slowly- through the fields. Haruhi was starting to doze off, thinking about the best way to get an umbrella or a raincoat, when the buzzing that she carried in her temples like a low-intensity headache tuned into a hysterical screeching.

 

“Haruhi!” screamed Tamaki, “I just learned that you almost kissed Kanan Matsuyama! Your pure lips were almost soiled!”

 

Haruhi frowned. Kyouya was such a gossip. “And I had to learn it from her lips! What other secrets have you been keeping from your daddy?”

 

_I can't believe that I'm stuck with this idiot until we get to the clinic._

Tamaki coughed. “In any case - I pardon both of you. I understand how terrible it is for young virginal women to avoid giving into the forbidden temptation of handsome men like me - I can see why you had to _almost_ release your tension,”

 

Haruhi heard wrestling sounds. Hikaru and Kaoru, taking over the mic.

 

“What he means is that next time he wants to watch,” said Hikaru.

 

“We will be there too - I’m sure Kanan won’t mind,”

 

“See, our poor deprived Leader has never been with two girls at the same time - he’s practically a virgin,”

 

Tamaki insulted them, colorfully, in two languages.

 

Haruhi smirked at the pale golden sun.

 

“What’s so funny?” asked Kosaka, watching her on the mirror.

 

“I’m just happy to be out - even for a little while,” said Haruhi.

 

More punching and smacking sounds. Tamaki’s voice came back clear and dignified.

 

“I do _not_ want you to get distracted with matters of the heart - there will be more than enough time for that after we accomplish our goal! You have to control your base impulses and sublimate your desires into the fight!”

 

“Furthermore, Kanan told me to pass you this message if I spoke with you before you left - something about a holocard to a friend - I pretended that you were still around,”

 

He cleared his throat.

 

“Roses are red,

 

violets are blue,

 

oranges are sweet

 

and so are you.

 

But the roses are wilting,

 

the violets are dead,

 

the Ouran school's empty

 

                                                                                 and so is your head.”           

 

Haruhi blinked. _What?_

“Personally, I think that this rhyme is the END of poetry as we know it - do not inflict that in any of her friends. I suggest Rimbaud. Or Baudelaire, if you ladies want to talk about flowers and fruits -” started Tamaki, and he cleared his throat again, and started to perform, incomprehensibly, in French:

 

 _« Mère des jeux latins et des voluptés grecques,_  
Lesbos, où les baisers, languissants ou joyeux,  
Chauds comme les soleils, frais comme les pastèques - »

 

A loud crash and whistle that almost made Haruhi wince in pain. Tamaki had lost the mic again.

 

“He means that you should have French kissed her!” howled Hikaru, while Kaoru made kissing noises in her ear. “We can teach you how to use your tongue when you come back!”

 

“Hey, Haruhi, listen to this one - I just made it up!” said Kaoru. “Roses are red, violets are blue, who is your daddy? And what does he do?”

 

_Very sensitive, guys._

 

“I have one, I have one!” said Hikaru, his voice excited like a child’s, “Roses are red, violets are blue - I’m using my hand but thinking of you,”

 

“Get off the mic!” clamored Tamaki’s in the background. “It is my duty to calm down your sister-in-arms in her way to her first mission in the real world! Stop perverting her innocent ears! This broadcast could be being recorded, like the ones Géneral de Gaulle made from London! Do you want to go down in History Books as perverts?!”

 

But it was too late. The twins had discovered a new game. Haruhi could picture them perfectly, taking turns to keep Tamaki at bay while they made up their silly poems.

 

“Radio Hitachiin dedicates this one to their Leader,” said Kaoru, and drumming on the mic, “Roses are red, my soul's pure and white - and I have two lovers - the left and the right,”

 

Haruhi looked through the back window. She could still see Ouran’s buildings, waiting for her return and barely touched by the light.

 

“Officer Kosaka,” she asked, “How long until we get to Tokyo, more or less?”

 

“Two hours,” answered the older woman, checking the GPS. “If the traffic is good,”

 

“Oh.”

 

“Roses are red,” teased Kaoru, and his voice was still broadcasting crystal clear, “Violets are blue,”

 

“And you have a face that belongs in a zoo,” said Hikaru, and to the twin’s joy, Tamaki actually roared.

 

“Don't be sad, I'll be there too,” added Kaoru, barely keeping his voice stable with the giggles.

 

“Not in the cage but laughing at you,” completed Hikaru.

 

"You just wait until Kyouya gets here!” shouted Tamaki.

 

It was going to be a long ride.

 

 

 

 

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry for the long wait! Truth is, I finished the first version of this chapter many moons ago, but it had more plot holes than a colander. It was truly tragic. Had to go back and fix it and then work got on the way for the rest of the time.
> 
> This chapter contains a lot of new info about some of the boys, and it is where the Zuka enter the field. I hope that you enjoy it, and thank you so much if you are still reading after all this time!
> 
> PS - In my head, Tamaki's mum looks like Delphine from Orphan Black.

**Chapter 6**

Kosaka's headquarters were crowded. Most of the officers were men, and most of them had dark bags around their eyes and burst capillars on their noses and cheeks, the side effect of drinking too much Dragonsip in too little time. They spoke in the mechanical tone of the chronically overworked. Recharging inlaws lined every wall. They looked like gigantic toys made of hard candy.

 

Kosaka directed the two teenagers to a low table and threw a few SD cards to Shindou, to keep him busy. "Run these through the usual suspect parameters - I want a report of the ten people most likely to run over a puppy in one hour,"

 

"But nobody has dogs," mumbled Shindou.

 

"Yes - that's why it's challenge. When you give up - when you are done, go to WonderSea on the next corner and use these ration tickets to buy three orders of extra-crusty fish sticks and three light melon sodas. You kids _do_ like that, don't you?"

 

Haruhi and Shindou nodded, intimidated by her high-strung voice. But Kosaka had already moved on, because she had noticed one of her colleagues leaving an interrogation room. She grabbed Haruhi's arm and dragged her to the door of the room, holding a sleek silver tablet. Shindou flinched at Haruhi, his face torn between fear and sympathy.

 

Kosaka had barely closed the door behind Haruhi when it slammed open.

 

“Kosaka! My office - now!” roared a tall man with slicked hair. He took in Haruhi and his face set in a mask of anger. "No - this is the last drop. Are you Haruhi Fujioka?"

 

"Yes..." said Haruhi, suddenly fearing for the safety of the mission. As Kyouya had predicted, her tooth had become silent as soon as they entered Tokyo, which was technically Zuka territory. But the damn radio -and the damn sedative! - were still attached to her body. She mentally crossed her fingers, praying for a quick dismissal, and focused on the badge pinned to the man's belt. "Senior Superintendent - Seizaburo Tachibana"

 

"THIS IS THE LAST DROP!" he repeated, pushing both women out of the room, and Haruhi scrambled to regain her seat next to Shindou, who was sweating profusely and (poorly) pretending not to hear the scene in front of him. He looked up only to ask Haruhi, "Are you OK?"

 

"Yes," she whispered back.

 

Superintendent Tachibana dragged officer Kosaka into his own office, which had a glass wall. Haruhi noticed that every single one of the policemen had stopped their stilted chatter and were listening to the violent scolding taking place behind the glass. Even the Inlaws seemed to be paying attention. Tachibana was gesturing with his arms over his head, while Kosaka stood very straight, her silver-gloved hands tied at the back, with her mouth unnaturally straight.

 

"You CANNOT use public resources to investigate a private matter!"

 

Kosaka's voice was much more contained, but Haruhi caught her vehement denial of it being a private matter, and the words, "Wrongfully accused," which made her heart toll.

 

"That is for the System to decide, if the suspect appears!! I cannot believe that you are behaving like this in the most chaotic month of the last ten years,"

 

Kosaka moved her mouth like a war telegraph. Haruhi caught "on leave,"

 

"Then don't hoard valuable resources - like your table, or the room, or the damn intern! We need every millimeter of brainpower that we have - if you are on leave, leave. And for God's sake, take that poor orphan back to Ouran,"

 

Haruhi looked at Shindou, who had not even reacted at Tachibana's words. She realized with a start that he was referring to her. _But I'm not an orphan. My father is not dead, not yet._

"It will do her no good to get her hopes up at this point - it's almost been a month. Do _not_ drag her down any further with your obsessive investigation," he pointed at Kosaka, who did not back away from him. Her fingers were curled like steel paws around her own wrists.

 

Outside, lightning and thunder punctuated his words. The row died as the rain started to fall, and Kosaka left her bosses' office with tightly coiled rage. She motioned to Shindou and Haruhi to leave with her.

 

"Leave the intern here!" barked the superintendent. "I need him to prepare for tomorrow's rally,"

 

"Don't look so happy about it," whispered Kosaka to the boy. "He's going to work you to death - good training for growing up,"

 

Another thunder. Kosaka frowned, and noticed Haruhi's staring out at the rain. "Shindou - were you raised in a barn or what? Give your coat to Fujioka!"

 

"But it's a police coat..." he said, pointing at the print-on badge. Kosaka rolled her eyes at him for the umpteenth time that morning and ripped the badge. "Now it's a black polyblend monstrosity. Heavens," Arai shed the enormous garment and passed it to Haruhi. "And you, put that on - Ouran doesn't even have a real doctor on staff, just that lazy nurse. Gods forbid that you get sick in that hole. You might as well be dead, for all the real medical help you'd get. How's your tooth feeling, by the way?"

 

Haruhi, who was zipping up the surprisingly lightweight jacket, startled and reflexively touched the silent radio with the tip of her tongue. She looked up, contorting her face not to look guilty, and remembering just in time that nurse Okai had told Kosaka that she had a cavity.

 

"Not too bad..." she said, following the police woman to the door. Kosaka had slid her tablet into her own jacket, and strapped her fire baton, which had been recharging next to an Inlaw. Haruhi wondered if she'd been allowed to have one when she was in Ouran, like Mori, or if she had learned to use it later, during her police training.

 

"If it hurts, tell me, and I will take you to a real dentist,"

 

Haruhi smiled - it felt like she was stretching her very bones. "It doesn't," she answered. "I'm fine,"

 

"Hmph," said Kosaka, checking her watch, "Put up your hood, we're going to walk,"

 

"Are you taking me back to Ouran?" asked Haruhi, falling in step behind the officer.

 

"Of course not. I'm on leave, and so are you - system approved. Do you miss you four-eyed boyfriend already?"

 

Haruhi shook her head, relieved. "That was nurse Okai's assistant,"

 

"He sure got very touchy-feely - I'd keep an eye out if I were you. You can't afford to - fuck, it's flooding!"

 

Outside the rain was hitting the pavement with a passion. Fat drops soaked Haruhi's jeans in seconds, one expanding circle at a time, and she was suddenly very grateful for Ouran's very sturdy work boots. At least her feet would stay dry. They walked, sloshing between the rushing domes of transparent umbrellas and the glistening peacekeeping inlaws, diving deeper and deeper in the twisting streets of Tokyo. They were not in the Red district, not yet - but Haruhi saw the signs that they were coming closer in the rose-red lamps that dotted every other building. The closer they got, the eerier the light became. It was too early in the morning for the night artists to come out and play, and when they reached the entrance of the red district, the only other figures were a couple of inlaws guarding the gates.

 

"Do you live here?" asked Haruhi.

 

"Nobody _lives_ here," said Kosaka, looking straight ahead. "They either work or pay for pleasure, but live? No," she approached the Inlaw to her right, and let it scan her eyes. "We are going to the bar where your dad worked,"

 

"Access granted," said the robot, rolling to let them pass.

 

The gates opened. And that was the moment where the buzzing restarted and a deep feminine voice echoed in Haruhi's ears. She looked around, before realizing that the crystal clear sound came from her tooth, and not from the red gages.

 

"Welcome to Zuka city," it said, with a hint of delight hidden in the words. "We'll be waiting for you at BonMall at 11:00 PM tonight,"

 

 

 

_________________________________________________________

 

 

 

 

Kosaka drove Haruhi through a dozen interviews with her dad's ex-colleagues. Haruhi didn't know anyone, except for the last pair - Misuzu, a thick-lipped man with luscious brown hair hugged Haruhi - _you look so much like your mama-_ and Mei, his very tan daughter, who was her age and, while covering her bronzed body with a gaudy yukata, offered Haruhi a make-over to cheer her up.

 

"No, thanks," said Haruhi, looking at the time on Kosaka's handcell. It was already half past five, and she had no idea of where BonMall was.

 

"Whatever. But you kinda look like a guy. If that's what prison does to you I'd better work my ass out in this bar for the rest of my life," and just like that, she went back to programming her holo make-up in a neon-lit mirror.

 

Every line of enquiry proved useless to Kosaka, although Haruhi found some comfort in remembering her dad with Misuzu - it helped her keep at bay the carnivorous worm that Tachibana's ominous words had planted: that it was too late already and that she was already an orphan.

 

Of course, he had been talking about "relative" orphan - that her parents were not around to take care of her. He had not meant it literally. But still.

 

"Yeah - Ranka took a pic with the chef... After he -the chef- fixed us a new cocktail," Misuzu talked like he was tired of repeating the same story over and over, like he had no inflections left to make it any more interesting than the first time. "We all tried it. It was delicious. We even clapped, didn't we, Mei?"

 

His daughter nodded, painting her pinky golden brown. "And then Ranka went to -err- powder the chef's nose, and that was the last time we saw him,"

 

"Officer Kosaka - may I call you Yuko?" said Misuzu, serving white tea with golden flakes that unfolded like origami. "What I don't understand is why our little Haruhi has to stay at such an awful place like Ouran. We would be ecstatic to take her in,"

 

Kosaka tapped one finger and arched one eyebrow. Misuzu pressed on. "If she has half the charm that her daddy did, she would fit in wonderfully - and she wouldn't want for a job either! My Mei could train her,"

 

"But I never wanted to be a hostess," said Haruhi, watching Mei's copper fingertips playing with her corkscrew hair, "I want to be a lawyer like my mom,"

 

Misuzu's eyes filled to the brim with incredible pity. "I know, sweetie," he said, holding Haruhi's hand, turning it over, taking in the calluses and the plant rashes, the nail that still had dirt beneath it and the burn from soldering a lose circuit in the server room. Misuzu's own hands were silky-soft with a glossy finish. "But look how she ended. Hosting is a much safer career path than lawyering. With your youth, have plenty of regulars in no time - maybe even your own patron, and then you could study law on your free time,"

 

Haruhi's mind jumped to the gasping and the shivering of the girls that Kaoru and Tamaki had taken. She blushed, and shook her head. "No,"

 

Officer Kosaka stood up to leave. "That settles it, then - no need to rush to the court to get her adoption papers. Not that the owner of a red host bar would have any chance of being qualified as a responsible parent,"

 

"I hear," said Misuzu, and his voice, which had been tuned to the high pitch of a middle-aged madam deepened into a vibrating baritone, "many things - and I protect my own. Nobody has ever said the same about Ouran - so many disappearances in such a little time,"

 

"Have a productive night, sir," said Kosaka without turning back.

 

Misuzu sighed like he was terribly disappointed on Haruhi, but blew her a kiss nonetheless. Mei waved her fingers in the air, playing the scale of goodbyes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

______________________________________________

 

 

 

Kosaka's apartment was as grey than her clothes and functional as a clinic. Everything glistened, and the air had the faint scent of disinfectant.

 

"I have tea and tofu for dinner," said Kosaka, listing the raw ingredients, "And a 3D food printer. So if you want a genmaicha tofu castle, and you know how to program it, knock yourself out,"

 

Haruhi took off the coat and her boots and as soon as Kosaka went into the bathroom, checked that the red powder package was still safely stuck between her skin and her wristcell. Strangely enough, her bracelet was blinking rhythmically in yellow, as it did every evening in Ouran before her kitchen shift.

 

She heard water running in the bathroom, and decided to check the apartment. Access was exclusively via iris scanner. That meant once Kosaka was distracted, it would be pretty easy to get out. But she didn't want her to notice, and trusting the hyper tense policewoman to go to sleep early was not a sound idea.

 

  
The 3D printer was a modest model, very similar to the one that the Fujioka's had in their kitchen. Haruhi fiddled with the available shapes and flavorings, and settled on fish-stick imitation (because Kosaka had seemed to like them so much) and American style red tea, for red powder camouflage.

 

However, Haruhi was not completely convinced that taking Kosaka out was the best course of action. She could - for instance - confess what she'd been up to in Ouran, since she arrived. How the rag-tag boys had dragged her inside their disturbing circle, and how they'd managed to contact an (alleged) Russian hacker who apparently had the keys and the knowledge to crack into every security camera in Japan. Surely that constituted valuable information, and Kosaka might be able to act on it faster and more effectively than Haruhi ever could.

 

Only that she wasn't sure that she completely trusted the police. Kosaka's motives were unclear, fogged by her single-minded intensity. Haruhi didn't know why Kosaka was so obsessed with locating her father, why she was getting into so much trouble at work, why she had gone through all the trouble of getting her out of Ouran and trying to make her feel as comfortable as she could. Plus, her loyalties were murky. Kosaka would not be able to act on Haruhi's information without compromising the boys and their dream, and maybe she wouldn't believe her, or if she did, all of Kosaka's resources would be blocked, like the security camera footage had been blocked to her eyes.

 

Haruhi frowned, disturbed by the realization that she had come to care about the boys, and that deep inside she felt more aligned with their ( _deranged, delusional, destructive_ ) goal than with Kosaka's. She prodded that sinister discovery with mindgloves, a bit afraid of the truth that lay beneath, and beneath a wall of excuses she realized that she trusted their chaos more than she trusted the system.

 

Which was a very suspicious feeling, as she had not chosen to trust them - especially not after they'd modified her eyes and pushed her into the center of their bootstrapped conspiracy.

 

But they had - from the beginning. And they had not hidden their actions - she'd been there when they sled down the pole with scavenged food, shot down drones and mysterious cyber pirates, and she had eaten their food, touched their drones and talked to their associates.

 

Haruhi was the only one that could carry out this mission, but she was also the only one who would win something other than an absurd satellite if they won. She would get her father back, and hopefully (and she did not lie to herself about the minimal chances that they had of escaping) they might be able to build a future somewhere else.

 

Kosaka, in spite of her hard work and her good intentions, could not promise even a tenth of that tiny chance.

 

And that tiny chance trumped Kosaka's good intentions any time.

 

Haruhi used her incisors to carefully rip the plastic sachet, and dropped the red powder in the tea compartment of the 3D printer.

 

 

 

__________________________________________

 

 

 

 

The first time that Haruhi tried her new eyes, her heart was beating faster than a drum.

 

Kosaka had fallen asleep gently on the couch, her mouth slacking and both hands plied under her cheek, like a small child. She was still frowning - and it wasn't until the eerie drug-induced silence gave way to snores that Haruhi dared to move from her seat.

 

A few licks of the heart-shaped lollipop had numbed Haruhi's mouth for one good hour, and given her a serious case of the droopy eye - at one point Mori had applied a freezing compress to her front and neck, and Tamaki had started to sing (not _too_ badly) to keep her awake - and her mouth consciously open- while Kyouya and the twins completed the operation.

 

She had fed Kosaka a bag full of candy powder. She should sleep at least until next morning. Haruhi could only hope that she managed to be back before she woke up, and that she would blame the snoozing on her chronic fatigue. She still felt guilty about leaving Kosaka there, but it was almost eight and she still had to find her way to BonMall.

 

She decided to test the iris print in the apartment, and lit up Kosaka's console - she would use the net to find the exact address before heading out.

 

The black screen turned blue, and Haruhi felt the infrared beam touching her eyes. She held her breath.

 

_Yuko Kosaka_

_Junior Officer, Level 3_

_Access Granted_

 

A completely unexpected wave of adrenaline rushed through Haruhi's head, - until she remembered that she was feeling triumphant about something that Kyouya had done to her without her consent, and the mad joy vanished. Her heart was still tight in her chest.

 

She was looking a very organized desktop. Haruhi tapped the explorer icon, and in the small screen that popped up she typed "BonMall". She was expecting a map, maybe some pop-up sales ads, but to her surprise the engine retrieved also a case file that included the word BonMall.

 

 

She clicked on the file. It was three years old. It mentioned BonMall just once, as one of the properties of the Suoh conglomerate. The Suohs were real estate royalty, and had been for centuries, dating back to a time when Tokyo was little more than a red district built on a marsh. Yuzuru Suoh had recently gone into politics - Haruhi had seen his very sparkling ads on holo TV and on half the building screens of the city - and his party had been climbing in the polls. Not a chance of winning, of course - Japan's party had been the same since the World War II, and the candidate that was going to win was Yoji Houshakouji.

 

The report was about a missing (probably stolen) necklace - a delicate web designed to lace over chest and neck, sprinkled with dew diamonds. It had belonged to the Suoh matriarch. Little more than an insurance case. The company had paid in full, and no further enquiries had been made.

 

Haruhi shut the window and focused on memorizing the route to BonMall. It would be some forty minutes away - if she walked fast.

 

She still had two hours until the meeting with the Zuka. And she did not want to be out on the street - vulnerable - any longer than necessary.

 

She could use some of the extra time to find some information about the boys.

 

Haruhi couldn't restrain a small vindictive smile. They had been so - silent - about their personal lives, while they seemed to know everything about her, and they had used it to manipulate her - transparently, yes, but the fact that she could see the strings did not mean that they were not pulling them. Now it was her chance to learn something about them.

 

She hesitated for a second, and then wrote:

 

**Ootori Kyouya**

 

And blinked twice when the search engine returned nothing.

 

Hmm. Maybe she had been too confident. Maybe, because they were minors, their files were protected.

 

She tried it again, with Tamaki Grantaine.

 

 

**Richard Grantaine**

 

Nothing. The engine suggested typing just "Grantaine".

 

So she did.

 

Five little windows, each with a photograph, popped up. They all showed the same woman - a delicate Westerner, with blonde hair and melancholic lavender eyes. She looked like a fairy tale princess, an impression belied by the reports attached to each picture.

 

 

 

**_Deep Cover Spy Flees Japan_ **

 

_Anne-Sophie Grantaine, a French citizen believed until recently to be the Event Manager for the Suoh Group, has been exposed as a deep-cover mole working for the European Alliance._

_She managed to destroy fifteen inlaws and to severely injure one Japanese citizen before being neutralized by Suoh's security team. However, Grantaine managed to escape in transit to the nearest police station. Her whereabouts are unknown, and she is considered highly dangerous._

_All her belongings, as well as her considerable body of work, are being processed by the Authorities. Due to Grantaine's access to high-profile clients and restricted areas -_

 

 

 

Haruhi clicked on the next picture. Anne-Sophie Grantaine's curls were pinned under a beanie, and she was smiling like a rogue.

 

Tamaki would certainly count as her belonging... and if he was left behind when she escaped... he must have been thirteen. Fourteen at most.

 

Merciful ancestors - he had been criminally processed at _fourteen_. Being the son of a spy, they must have applied all the pressure they could to make him spill all his mother's secrets. Haruhi had heard stories about enhanced interrogation techniques - and then she had learned in-depth about them in class. Tamaki's skin looked smooth enough, but she had only seen him under the dim red lights of the server or the darkened nooks of the dormitories. She wondered if it held up in broad daylight, or if it might be marred by machine-applied motivation.

 

And - he was, after all, half Japanese, and his mother had been in deep cover - was he part of that deep cover?

 

Had Tamaki been born as an alibi? And who was his father? Had he been "processed" too?

 

She would ask him the next time she saw him. If she saw him. If she could.

 

Could she?

 

Haruhi typed again.

 

**Hitachiin Kaoru**

 

A hundred thousand results, all of them mismatched. Well, it was a common name.

 

**Hitachiin Hikaru**

 

 

She remembered Hikaru's reaction while they were watching the security camera footage of her dad's prison, and wrote:

 

**Hitachiin clinic experiment**

 

One lonely report - a clinic in the outskirts of the village of Hitachiin, dedicated to genetic research, agricultural development and animal husbandry, had burned down ten years ago. Nobody had died, but all the animals had escaped, and the fire had caught on some of the nearby neighborhoods and fields. Hitachiin had been evacuated.

 

Haruhi had seen the twins’ skin in class and in the fields - they were very touchy-feely and liked to drop their jackets, but they bore no scars - no burns. It might be a coincidence.

 

Unless it wasn't.

 

She knew that Morinozuka had been born on the school's premises, so there wasn't much to look for there. Looking at the time, and noticing that she only had half an hour left, she typed the last name.

 

**Mitsukuni Haninozuka**

 

 

 

And the horror popped up, one holo-rendered, fully animated murder scene at a time, red-tinted and purpling, arenas drinking the blood of the circus children.

 

The problem with the Authorities was that they had originally been programmed by optimists and engineers, by individuals that either trusted human nature or rationale that had no reason to distrust it. As a result, the first ten hundred laws had been exquisitely codified. Murder was ruled as illegal, of course, as was torture, sexual and physical abuse, hurting minors. It never took into account how creative other engineers could get to circurmvert it, how easy it would be to disguise a fighting pit as a "Children Circus" where children hurt each other in new and imaginative ways, as a sport on specialized forums. And how terrifying it was that the crime had only become punishable after it had been declared a crime.

 

Because it wasn't illegal for sane kids to fight each other to the death while adults looked on, as long as those adults were not their legal tutors. The only guilty parties would be the children themselves.

 

Mitsukuni had fought for seven years and killed almost a hundred children. The last child has been his brother. The first adult had been the referee in that match. He had arrived to Ouran at eleven. He was considered too damaged to reenter society and further security measures would be applied to him and the other Circus survivors when they turned eighteen. It didn't take a Lawyer to know what that meant.

 

Haruhi took a deep breath and closed the windows. Forty minutes had passed. Quiet as a mouse, she rearranged the last opened filed and powered off the console. She took Kosaka's black police coat, slid into her boots and looked directly into the iris scan.

 

The door slid open, silent as a serpent, and closed almost immediately behind her back.

 

 

 

________________________________

 

 

 

It was still raining, but the fat droplets of morning had turned into viciously cold pins that flew diagonally with the wind. Haruhi looped her fingers around the hood's strings and adjusted it to cover most of her face, then plunged her hands into her pockets.

 

_Now would be a great time to hear another voice inside my head._

 

But the tooth stayed silent. She had memorized the fastest route to BonMall, a good 4 km away from Kosaka's apartment. In the pictures it had looked big, and imposing, and it had at least twelve floors and many patios and food courts, five parking lots and a lot of entrances - she hoped that at least one of them was open and that someone would meet her outside. She did not like the idea of breaking into a closed shopping mall that was probably plagued with cameras in the slightest.

 

She passed an okonomiyaki truck and her mouth watered - the cabbage and shrimp pancakes were one of her mum's special treats, once a week right until the week she died, with extra plum sauce, piping hot and crusty. The scent was so powerful that she stopped to queue in front of the food truck before she realized that she had no card, and that she would have to pay via iris print, which would in turn leave a track of where "Officer Kosaka" had been that night.

 

Haruhi forced her feet to walk away, looking back just once at the golden glow of the mobile kitchen and breathing as slowly as she could to keep the scent inside. She walked past the residential towers that lodged all civil servants and cut through the stark avenues of a winter park. At the other side laid a cheerful pink service district - not Red and Racy and Ranka, but catering to softer desires and innocent flirting. Some of the establishments even served high tea complete with elaborate cakes. The host bars melted into a scattering of high-end boutiques with price tags as high as the overhead skyscrapers. Each boutique had an iris scanner, so Haruhi pretended to fiddle with her hood to keep her eyes firmly averted from them.

 

Her wristcell's yellow light was still blinking. She pressed her lips to it and whispered "off", but it didn't work. It was probably a left-over alarm from her kitchen schedule. Nothing to worry about, surely.

 

Still, she was happy to see the mass of BonMall appear in front of her like a fairytale castle. It was difficult to miss. In daylight, its walls were white and smooth. Like most modern malls it had no windows to enhance the feeling of being in another dimension and encourage consuming, but the roof was made of glass to let in the natural light. By night, it was another story - huge projectors brought the walls to life with giants, and every side of BonMall featured a different holoyection. From her perspective, Haruhi could see a campaign ad for Yuzuru Suoh.

 

The base of the building was circled by Inlaws.

 

Haruhi did not want to run away, because that would guarantee the special attention of the robots. However, she could not see a way of entering the mall without them seeing her. She had avoided leaving a trace of "Kosaka's" whereabouts so far, and it wouldn't do to leave the only clue right at her destination.

 

The rain was easing into a light and chilly fog, and Haruhi realized that she had been standing still on the same spot for several minutes, watching the Inlaws come and go in spiral patterns. One of the decrees forbade looking too intently or for too long and safeguard and security devices designed to protect citizens and their property. She felt a tiny drop of sweat - or maybe rain - sliding down her chest. Haruhi turned around and walked slowly up the street that had led her there, until she found a side street that she took to get to another side of BonMall.

 

Houshakouji, the favorite candidate, greeted her from this wall and promised her ration stability and excellent education. There was a difference with the Suoh side, though - one door was open, and an energetic team of workers was coming and going from the mall to a huge truck without even a glow from the Inlaws. The workers were all dressed in white with maroon caps and scarves, and were carrying enormous boxes from the truck into the mall.

 

She wandered casually to the truck. It was white and weathered, with a burgundy logo that read "TUPA EVENTS - LIGHT AND SOUND". She hid behind the twisted wheels until five workers had finished unloading a particularly large box. One of the smaller ones almost let a side of it fall on his foot, and his taller colleague scolded him.

 

"Y'all look straight ahead until this monster is in the dry, ya hear me??!"

 

"Aye!"

 

It was too good of a chance not to take it. No other workers were coming in her direction, the trailer was completely open and there were plenty of boxes to duck behind. The mass of the vehicle would protect her from the street cameras, and the Inlaws seemed utterly unconcerned with whatever was going on.

 

So she jumped inside, going into the box space as deeply as she could, and hid behind a column of slim rectangular boxes marked as beams.

 

Right on time, because the workers were back.

 

What she needed was a medium-big box that marked as "Frail" and "This side up". That way she would be safe from being carried around like a steel beam, and also being dropped as one. She found that at the far side of the box space. Haruhi waited until she couldn't hear the workers and used her teeth and nails to carefully open the cardboard. The box was filled with light bulbs and foam, and it was probably much lighter than she was. She could only hope that the bottom did not give up.

 

Haruhi crammed the lights and foam behind the last boxes and bent her body inside. She closed the box from the inside as well as she could, interlocking the flaps. The chilly air that she had trapped with her quickly warmed, and then she could only close her eyes like she had done in the pod, and count her heartbeats, and try and remember the reasons that she was going to give to the Zuka if they were inside, and how she had to trust the plan, and go forward with it, and bring back to Ouran as much help as she could as fast as she could, because each one of her heartbeats marked a stolen second of her father's life.

 

Eventually she heard the workers moving the beam tower and stomping around her box. It still took it by surprise when someone pushed her through the space box, and she stuffed her hand (covered in white sweater) into her mouth to deafen any squeals when the box was lifted. The cardboard bent under her weight, and all she could imagine was the impact and the arrest.

 

_Please don't give, please don't give._

But two men caught the box by the bottom before that happened. She was soaked in sweat.

 

"Heavy! I thought these were lights!"

 

"Might be the rotor's motors, they tend to pack'em together,"

 

"Are we taking the lift for this one?"

 

"The trolley - the light geeks want all the bulbs on top of the stage, and they will take'em from there,"

 

"They gonna work all night, you think?"

 

"They'd better. The rally starts tomorrow morning. You goin'?"

 

"Sure am! They give free drinks and ration credits. I'm bringing the kids too for the holo combats, they love Demon Shiro. You?"

 

They dropped Haruhi, and their voices trailed off, only to be replaced by the huffs and puffs of two other guys. She felt the squeeze of the boxes around her, and then, after two hundred heartbeats, the trolley started to move.

 

They unloaded her and the other boxes as unceremoniously as a rotor motor deserved. Haruhi waited until she heard the trolley leave and then pushed softly against the cardboard flaps. They gave in easily, so at least they had not put any other box on top of her head.

 

She listened intently, but she couldn't hear anything. If there were light engineers coming to set the bulbs up, this could be her only chance to get out and hide and look for the Zuka. She pressed her teeth together, waiting for a crackle, for anything - she would have welcomed even Tamaki's voice. But inside her head there was only the crackling of dead air.

 

She had to get out now, before the trolley came back with another load and the engineers appeared. Haruhi unflapped the box and she could have sworn that the scratching of the cardboard was the loudest noise in the world. Her mouth was dry but her skin was soaked, and her stomach was a knot that jumped up and down. She lifted her head slowly, and, not seeing anyone, gathered the courage that she had left and crawled out, flat on her belly. She slid through the narrow streets of that labyrinth of boxes, telling herself that she would try and hide beneath the stage, but then she arrived to a cul-de-sac.

 

It would be faster to stand up and make a run for the closest hiding spot. She was still wearing the black raincoat, hood included, and her face would not appear on camera - probably.

 

The chance of getting caught was smaller now, she thought. Much smaller than in the streets of Tokyo, much smaller than inside the box in the truck. The odds had to be in her favor now.

 

So she took her chance and stood up - the stage was very wide, and the boxes were everywhere, but she was only three meters away from the edge, and then the structure would cover for her. She made a run for it, and it was only one step after starting that realized her mistake.

 

The sole of her heavy work boots hit the stage floor like an earthquake, drumming away in the dimly lit mall. Haruhi blanched and panicked, unable to stop on the spot, so another heavy foot fell and made a sound. She only had one option, because they had to have heard that, and that option was to jump, but before she could do it, the light bathed her.

 

A slow clapping filled her ears, and she turned her head around, covering her eyes from the brightness.

 

"Looks like we have a star among us," said a velvety voice.

 

"Bambi's mother, more like," replied a childish one. "Startled like a deer,"

 

_I can still see_. _It is not an Inlaw. My eyes are fine._

 

"Don't worry, doe dear," the velvety voice approached, and Haruhi turned quickly. Strong hands pulled her, and she found her face smashed against soft cotton - and soft breasts. The same hands took off her raincoat in one swift move, and she felt smaller ones patting her up and down.

 

"Hey!"

 

"I take that you are the Ouran envoy," said the taller girl, lifting Haruhi's face to take a good look at it. "But I was under the impression that they were going to send a man?"

 

"It's only boys," said Haruhi, "No men,"

 

Giggles all around her.

 

"That's a good one. I couldn't agree more," said the tall girl. "Turn off the lights!" she said. "Electricity test in working order!"

 

The focus dimmed and faded. Haruhi's eyes took a moment to adjust to the semi-darkness again.

 

"I meant that we're all min-"

 

"Don't worry, dear doe - I know what you meant. But we are going to be working through the night, and I can't work on an empty stomach. We just picked some okonomiyaki on our way here, would you care to join us?"

 

Haruhi's stomach rumbled like the thunder.

 

"I guess that's a yes. Come on in then."

 

__________________________

 

 


End file.
